


My Hands In The Soil

by Experimental



Series: Forbidden Colors [4]
Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Backstory, Family Secrets, Guilt, Multi, POV First Person, Paranormal, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:55:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experimental/pseuds/Experimental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I couldn't help thinking that, as soon as the day came I didn't depend on him anymore, he would disappear. So I did it before he could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
Learning to cope with feelings aroused in me  
My hands in the soil, buried inside of myself  
My love wears forbidden colours  
My life believes in you once again   


  


* * *

Dreams of him haunt me even now.

A grove of cherry trees in full bloom. The landscape bathed in the blood-red light of a lunar eclipse. Him, among everything else, shining pale and sharp like ice, like steel. The death of that woman. Myself, my violation. My agony. And at every scream, every twitch of muscle, his pleasure—and hatred—etched into me. . . .

Some might insist they are flashbacks, but they are never completely the same. Over the years they have . . . changed somehow. Been added to like mere memory cannot. A switch in point of view. Sometimes feelings and places appear to my senses more real than reality; sometimes much less so and I am well aware that I am dreaming. Sometimes events unfold in a way different from how I remember them, if memory of such a thing can even be accurate. A very different way. . . .

I see blood on my hands. Except, I'm not so sure anymore who it belongs to.

In my dreams, the images of medical procedures excite me. I know it was I who performed them, but I cannot remember physically doing them. Hearts beating without bodies. Unimaginable X-ray images burned into my retinas. The smell of burnt flesh and disinfectant that makes me want to vomit, and the putrid saffron smear of iodine over everything. Women violated in the name of science. Fetuses that have become tumors. Anxious children. People in pain. People having operations or drugs given them that they don’t need, that are killing them. Being told they will die when they won’t. Being lied to for the sake of the advancement of medical technology, or some richer individual. Or maybe just my own sick curiosity. . . .

Where does this all come from? Why does it excite me in sleep when my conscious mind finds it repulsive? It cannot all come from him. I do believe in monsters: They live in the human psyche, waiting to be born. But this . . .

When I dream these dreams, the one inside me kicks like a fetus in its womb. I don't know how long it's been growing there, or who implanted it or if it's been there as a part of me all along, but I know what it responds to. I know _whose_ influence it responds to.

Except lately, it's been _his_ blood on my hands. I can’t see my own skin for it. My hands are slick and red, spotted with darker, congealed pieces that cling to my skin like leeches. It runs down my wrists. It stains the cuffs of my shirt. It won't come out.

His blood stains the front of my shirt, seeping through, seeping into me like the ink of a tattoo, or this curse he's saddled me with. He stands as if crucified before me, facing me, somehow on his feet. As an act of defiance, perhaps—of martyrdom, welcoming me into his embrace despite all the nasty things I intend to do to him, knowing full well how that self-righteousness disgusts me, fuels me. I know I am justified in what I'm about to do; he knows that as a murderer he deserves nothing less. I have my arms around him, and his weapon in my hand. I thrust it into his back, over and over. Just like he stabbed that woman's heart as I watched, all those years ago.

It feels so good. I cannot describe how good, and how wrong, it feels. It feels like sex. The only sex I have ever known, a violent, vile, and unnatural kind of penetration that, against my will, sends a thrill of satisfaction throughout my body. I feel it tugging behind my bellybutton, in my groin. It shoots up and down my limbs. In a strange way it feels like self-mutilation—like I'm committing seppuku through his body. And I can't help wondering if some of this blood on my hands is my own. Would it make me stop if it were? I don’t think so. I want him to feel the violation he inflicted upon me all those years ago that much, even if a part of me is taken down with him. That's how desperately I want this.

His back must be a ragged mess, causing him excruciating pain with even the shallowest breath, but he hardly moves. He stares at me with eyes that are no longer able to hide behind glasses. And I revel in the reversal of our positions thinking, surely, I must be the stronger one now. Now that the knife is in my hand. His gaze is unwavering, penetrating, judging. He can't quite wipe the bitter smile off his lips even now. Yet somehow there is no more pretentiousness in it. He knows he's at my mercy as much as I'm at his.

I search and search, but I can't find the hate in that face that I thought would be so obvious. It is buried in a liar’s smile. It is buried within myself, until it is all in myself. I look at my dripping hands and I see a killer mirrored in them, a monster. A demon child. Something that should never have been allowed to continue on.

I am hated.

Reviled.

I feel it in that moment, that single infinite second. I feel it in my heart, my solitude. My singularity. My sorry state. And it hurts so much I no longer care: I want to embrace that child, nurture him. I want to become the monster inside him because that is what everyone expects me to do, so why should I continue to fight it in vain? I want to have him the way he had me so long ago. It becomes a vicious wheel spinning round the two of us. It keeps us locked in this moment, in that grove of cherry trees, and—like something in a song, we can check out but never leave. He murmurs something to me. A name that's not really a name but still sounds familiar, and I know I will never remember it when I wake up, even though it is my own.

It belongs to both of us. Because we’re not really so different. And even if I kill him, I can never kill him. Not without killing my self.

So I lean down and kiss his lips. In my dream, I'm simply compelled to do it. It is the sweetest kiss, because it is the purest symmetry in existence. It is a kiss I give my inferior, and take from the one who made me kneel inferior to him. Who destroyed my humanity, or bound me to it. It is a kiss of hate, but in my hate I am understood. I am justified. I am baptized and born anew from the pieces he broke me into, the murderer who cursed me and set me free, and my eyes are unclouded of delusion. I know who I am. I am a child of the darkness.

I wake up, heart pounding like it's about to burst, to feel nothing on my lips.

Somehow I feel bereft.

How can that be?  


* * *

Tsuzuki put in his request again after our last case.

It had nothing to do with the case, which began and ended without incident. It was merely something he did every decade or so, like a convict who's served most of a hundred-year sentence wondering if he could finally get out on parole for good behavior. Tsuzuki was wondering if he had finally fulfilled whatever it was that was keeping him here in the purgatory that is a shinigami’s existence. He wondered if he could die for good. It was a thing he did out of curiosity, at regular intervals like I said, but I didn’t learn that until some time later.

He wouldn’t tell me about it. He thought that if he did, I would be angry with him. Of course, he never said as much, but after all these years, I didn't need to read his mind to know which direction his reasoning would take. It had something to do with my convincing him to stay instead of burning himself into oblivion, back when I nearly lost him in Kyoto.

I think I said something about being lost without him. I said a lot of things at that time that I don’t really remember all that well, but he does. Perfectly. Despite the state he was in, somehow he remembers. Often at the strangest times. Like my words were something precious to him to be protected. And who knows? Maybe they were.

Even now, I doubt he would leave even if by some freak chance his request was granted. All because of what I said to him that one night in Kyoto. Though he's been wanting it more than anything for the past eighty years, because he feels obligated to me, he would give up his chance at salvation.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't try and see if, first, that salvation was even possible.

It was also because of what I'd said that he felt a need to keep his request a secret from me. But he should have known me well enough by then to know it wouldn’t work. I would notice that something was wrong, and I would find out what it was whether he came straight with me or not.

I could sense the gist of it from his behavior and the subtle reactions of our coworkers when he was around, like they were treading on thin ice whenever they had a reason to interact with him. The rest was filled in for me when I went over his head, and asked the person who knows Tsuzuki the best.

Even now I hate visiting the Castle of Candles. I dread the day the emotions that linger there like a thick layer of dust over everything finally overwhelm me, no matter how much I may have improved when it comes to defending myself from them.

But I was worried about Tsuzuki, so it never crossed my mind that I shouldn't go because of my own discomfort. Besides, no one in our department had been around as long as Tsuzuki, and I doubted any of them would give me a straight answer to my question even if they knew it. Tatsumi and the chief would stonewall me—granted, they would have every right to—and the rest would probably pretend not to have the first clue as to what I was talking about.

But I hardly had to explain myself to the Count for him to feel sorry enough for me and spill the beans.

I didn't mean to use his fondness for Tsuzuki to my own advantage, but I wanted an answer. And the Count gave it to me without making a bigger deal of it than, “Well, as his partner, you really should be hearing this from him, not me.”

He told me about Tsuzuki's past requests to move on, and how it was something he had just decided to do for himself one year without discussing it with anyone—although somehow someone had figured out what he was up to, and now everyone knew when he was putting in one of these requests, even if no one ever talked about it. He also told me that each time Tsuzuki did this, Enma promptly rejected him. “You have to understand, Kurosaki, he's serving a kind of life sentence here, if you'll forgive the expression. Enma doesn't plan on letting him go anytime soon, no matter how hard he works. It's a condition of his employment here.”

“But that hardly seems fair.” I had had a suspicion there was some sort of agreement between the two like that, but I hadn't given much thought to how deep it actually went. “Everyone else gets to move on eventually, no matter how bad the things they did were. What could he have done that was worse than anything anyone else here has done?”

“Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you. You know that.”

So why did I ask, in other words.

Because when I really thought about it, I knew next to nothing about Tsuzuki's life, let alone whatever crimes he had committed to land himself a position in Juuohcho as a shinigami, ordered to take the lives of others over and over again for the remainder of his existence. I suspected he might have killed someone. He hurt someone very badly, whatever he did, but whether it was by betraying them or worse I never knew. It wasn't my place to ask, as much as I sometimes thought it would make things easier between us. Would I want to know the whole story? Would it even change anything? It's still hard for me to believe, looking at him, that Tsuzuki could ever willfully hurt another human being, but experience has taught me that oftentimes the most gentle, most self-disciplined people are the most unpredictable. You never know if those careful smiles are hiding something darker and crueler within.

In Tsuzuki's case, I did know how fragile his exterior was. And I knew what he was capable of from watching him in the field. But at the same time, I have seen evil up-close and personal—I have felt it in me as though it were my own personal demon—and I knew that Tsuzuki was anything but the monster he thought he was.

The monster he felt—selfishly—he had to protect me from.

But I still didn't understand. If there was no hope of ever ending his sentence, and these requests were just some ritual Tsuzuki went through every ten years or so, why did he feel the need to keep the whole business from me?

“That's a personal question, isn't it, lad? God knows, I shouldn't even be talking to you about it.”

But in my frustration, I was convinced the real problem lay with Tsuzuki's refusal to trust me.  


* * *

When I slammed the folder down on his desk, he didn't look up, didn't even flinch. As if he had seen this coming a mile away. It made the words I'd been aching to say come out all the easier.

“You idiot! Are you trying to run away from me or something?”

He looked up then. There was surprise and confusion in those purple eyes of his, as if he really had no idea. “What are you talking about?”

“As if you didn't know. What, did you think I'd just figure it out on my own? That someone else around here would conveniently fill me in about that little request you put in? Or were you hoping I wouldn't notice? Did you forget I'm an empath or something?”

He turned back to the desk, and just stared at it for what seemed like several minutes, but I could tell he wasn't actually seeing it.

“It's none of your concern,” he said at last.

There were half a dozen options he could have chosen from as he was sitting there staring. He could have cracked a joke, he could have made something up, smiled in that easy way of his and said in some cute voice, “Don't worry about it, Hisoka.”

Instead, I got, “It doesn't have anything to do with you. Besides, it wasn't serious anyway. Not this time. Not really. And in any case, it wasn't going to go through—”

“What do you mean, 'not really'? How can filing for an application to pass on be anything _but_ serious?”

“I don't know why you're taking this so personally, Hisoka. It's nobody's business but mine what I do with my life—or . . . whatever you call this. . . .”

I must have made some indignant sound, because he turned back to me suddenly. I remember being outraged at his choice of words, even if I couldn't read anything from him. He'd gotten much better over the years we'd been together at keeping his thoughts and emotions to himself, but usually I could still read them when he was in one of his moods.

I couldn't then, and it shouldn't have bothered me so much, but right then, I really wanted to know _exactly_ what he was thinking.

“Of course, it's my business, you ass,” I told him. “You're my _partner_. I don't see how it could not concern me if you're thinking about . . . about leaving.” I didn't know what other word to use for it. We were already dead, and who knows what Enma had planned for him when—or if—he ever decided Tsuzuki had served his time as a shinigami. “The least you could do is talk to me about this. I told you I loved you, for god's sake.”

“Yeah, I wonder about that sometimes.”

He said it with a sarcasm that wasn't like him, and it hit me like a slap in the face. He didn't need to say it any more clearly than that: My idea of love and his weren't exactly congruent to one another.

He might as well have just upended a bucket of cold water on me, because I was suddenly all too aware of our audience of coworkers, and ashamed that I was so close to losing my cool in front of them.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have just let all this go—when I would have balked at the idea of getting the truth out in the open. I thought it was safer to just pretend the things that were too unpleasant to face weren't there, and hoped that maybe if I didn't acknowledge them they would go away on their own. It seems trite to say it after all these years, but the fact remains: Kyoto changed all that. I still had to fight the urge in every bone in my body to do just what I was so used to doing right then—to just drop it, let it be. But it was that kind of inaction, that do-nothing, look-the-other-way attitude, that led to requests to move on that were or weren't serious. I asked him if we could discuss it in private, and he acquiesced. Grudgingly, for once.

“Look, it's really nothing to be concerned about,” he continued to profess once we were outside; and really, he didn't tell me anything the Count hadn't already. “It's just something I do every decade or so just to see if I can. Sometimes it just gets too painful continuing to exist like this. You know, watching the world change around you, feeling like everything is going to hell and there's nothing you can do about it except rob another innocent person of their soul. It hurts. Maybe you just haven't been here long enough to know what that feels like, but you will.”

I wanted to tell him I already knew, to ask him who the hell he thought he was to say what I had or had not experienced, but I kept my mouth shut. He wasn't saying it to hurt me.

He smiled then. It was strange, to see that contrast. “You're the only one who's ever made me feel like there's a reason to bear it since I've been here.”

But I also caused him pain. He didn't have to say it. I knew. I could tell by his smile, what he left unsaid. What it would have pained him too much to say out loud. I bore just as much responsibility for his tortured existence as anyone—maybe the most—but he couldn't exactly accuse me to my face of being the one to blame, either. “But you shouldn't have gone behind my back, asking about me. Don't look at me like that. I'm pretty sure you didn't find out about it through me.”

“You could have just told me.”

“I didn't want . . .” Tsuzuki sighed, long and insufferable. “I didn't want to have to try and explain it. That's personal stuff, Hisoka. Why can't you just trust me?”

Why couldn't I? It wasn't like I told him about everything that ever happened to me. But for some reason, I just couldn't let it go. “You promised me once you wouldn't leave.”

“And I'm still here, aren't I?”

“Dammit, Tsuzuki, you know that's not what I mean!”

He knew—we both knew—he never had any intention of keeping that promise. He made it because at the time he had changed his mind. At the time, he found something he wanted to live for—or maybe he just couldn't bear the guilt of what it would do to me to lose him, even if he wouldn't have had to bear it for long. I don't know.

But I couldn't help thinking that as soon as the day came I wouldn't need to depend on him anymore, he would disappear.  


* * *

So I did it before he could.

Well, that is to say, I didn't actually disappear. I took an extended vacation. I hadn't planned anything, I didn't even know where I would go or how long I would be away, I just knew after the whole mess with Tsuzuki's request that I had to get away from work and the office and him for a little while. Maybe it sounds counterintuitive given what I yelled at him for—or hypocritical; yeah, it sounds rather hypocritical in hindsight, to say the least—but I couldn't stand it anymore. I needed some room to myself. To breathe. And to think about where things stood.

That was the year I would have turned twenty-four—just two years younger than Tsuzuki was when he died. I had been a shinigami for eight years, a full third of my existence, and Tsuzuki's partner for the entirety. It was common knowledge around the office that that was the longest partnership he had had in all of his seventy-eight-year-long tenure as a shinigami, by a mile. Almost none lasted past six months; most, like Tatsumi, fizzled out after a few weeks and were lucky—or unlucky, depending on your perspective—to see a couple months with him; and there were some that didn't even make it through the first day. Granted, though, those were typically the ones whose appointments to careers as shinigami had been mistakes in the first place. It became something of a joke that being partnered with Tsuzuki was the first step in a new shinigami's training—a litmus test, if you will, to see if they deserved their placement. If they could survive a few weeks with him, they could handle anything the job threw at them.

Tsuzuki usually doesn't mind being made into an initiation ritual, laughing along with whoever it is who brings up that old joke (unless that person is Terazuma). But to me the whole thing just seems sad. After all, every day we're still working together is another record for him. I have to try not to show my frustration with him every time he wants to make a big deal out of our anniversaries because I know exactly how big a deal each one of them is for him. Each year we're together is one fewer year he spends alone, an office laughing-stock, or stuck in a miserable (or even violent, in Terazuma's case) working relationship. And each year we're together is another year Chief Konoe has someone to keep Tsuzuki on track, and to keep Tatsumi from having to confront his demons, and to keep the Gushoushin from having to be pulled away from their work to accompany him on yet another case. . . .

In so many ways, it seems, he needs me.

But do I need him?

So many times I've thought about this, and about how everyone I work with has done so much to make me feel as though I belong, as though I'm home. But if Tsuzuki suddenly weren't there, would I still feel that way? Would half of those people even have reason to be nice to me when we passed in the hall? Somehow I don't think so.

And somehow I think, if he weren't there, I wouldn't want them to treat me as kindly as they do anyway. I'd probably treat them colder than Tatsumi does, if I weren't downright rude. Not intentionally, of course, but Tsuzuki has a way of preventing me from shutting down emotionally like I've naturally been inclined to do for most of my life. I realize that when he goes away for any length of time, or when I find myself alone in the conference room wondering what if, and suddenly I start to feel like he'll never come back and wonder, panicking, what I'm going to do. Like how if you think about breathing too hard, you can't breathe at all. It's irrational, I know, and I'm not sure if it's that fact that frightens me more at times like those, or my imagination.

So why would I opt to go away, you ask, if I'm afraid of being without him?

Because sometimes you just need to step back in order to see the whole picture. At least, that's one way of looking at it. The truth, of course, is much more complicated.  


* * *

I had the holiday coming for a while. Vacation time doesn't exactly accrue in Meifu like it does in the living world—though we get the same amount of job-related stress as the living and need the time to recover from it once in a while in order to function properly—but I still only ever used what time I did rack up when I was told to take a break, usually by Tatsumi or the chief, who tended to be better than I was at judging when I was working myself to exhaustion. I never seemed to see it—or else I subconsciously convinced myself not to—because I like working. Not the line of work, necessarily, but it's a job, and usually not a hard one if I don't think about it too much. More to the point, it keeps my mind focused on something other than my own personal troubles.

Once it was thoughts of Muraki that plagued me: what he did to me, how much I hated him, how I was going to avenge myself and defeat him. The ghost of him never entirely went away; I think it would be unnatural if it ever did. But slowly, as the years dragged on, thoughts of him were replaced by thoughts of Tsuzuki.

And, unlike Muraki, I see Tsuzuki every day. I have to work with him. Him and his feelings, which he projects like—well, like a projector. It's not hard to see where the difficulty lies, here.

And the part that really frustrates me is that I can't even help what he does to me. On the most fundamental level.

The problem with empathy is that when you feel another person's emotions as if they were your own for so long, you begin to lose sense of who they came from originally. You learn to question every thought that comes into your head, wonder, Did that come from someone else, or is it really mine? Every idea, every feeling. Every desire. . . .

Tsuzuki had been in love with me for a long time.

I don't know exactly when his feelings changed from a protective sort of care to this attraction, this longing for something more, for some intimacy neither of us really knows how or is particularly willing to give, but I knew enough to recognize early in our working relationship that a change had taken place. I recognized it in the increased seriousness behind the joking and teasing. I could feel it in his touches, that the pretense of the joke was just a front for everyone else, just an excuse to put his hand on my arm, or shoulder, or on my head like you might a little brother. It certainly wasn't for my benefit.

Well, not entirely. I never needed to say it, but somehow he must have known what I could sense from him, and how well. Despite his veneer of obliviousness, he's better at reading a person just by looking at them than anyone else I've ever known—sometimes he's even better than me, and he doesn't have the benefit of empathy—and sometimes I wonder if he even realizes how intuitive he is.

Either way, he must have realized early on that it was futile to hide his feelings from me, whatever the nature of them was. Which meant I would get a full dose of his affection if I wasn't careful, just by being in the same room with him. Or his desperation for my company when his mood turned sour. Or his—

Well, I guess they can only really be called lusts.

Just because we had this sort of mutual understanding didn't mean he had an obligation to acknowledge any of those feelings out loud. For which I must say I was grateful, even if I swore the dishonesty between us was so palpable everyone in the office could feel it.

Maybe it sounds strange to say I honestly didn't know if I returned those feelings, but I can't be the only one in the history of the world who wasn't sure if what he was feeling was really love. I might be the only one who wasn't sure only because of his tendency to soak up the emotions others are projecting, though. I never wanted to hurt Tsuzuki, whatever I did, which, where the two of us were concerned, meant I could only move in one direction: nowhere. What if the attraction I felt towards him wasn't real, I asked myself, but just a mirror of his affection for me? Wouldn't it be wrong to encourage him—wouldn't it only hurt us both—to tell him I felt the same way, when the feeling was a lie from the get-go?

But that didn't change the fact I spent one too many nights unable to sleep, bolting awake in my bed and biting my tongue to keep his name from spilling from it because of some incredibly realistic dream of him touching me, kissing me, wrapping his lips around me. . . .

Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that being with Tsuzuki like that, even if only in my imagination, should be the same as it was with Muraki—that it should be just as bad as it was with Muraki.

Reality, though, stubbornly tried to prove itself completely the opposite. It felt good. Even if it was just in my head, even if it was just a byproduct of being around him day in and out, it felt like it would be good to be with Tsuzuki like that, like it would be safe if it were in his arms. So I don't know why I felt like I had to be repulsed by him, reject him—like it was somehow okay to jerk off to this image of us in my mind at three o'clock in the morning, but god forbid I ever let those casual touches become the something more both of us—at least on some level—wanted them to be.

Maybe if it had felt the same, I wouldn't have felt bad pushing him away. Maybe if it had felt the same, I'd feel justified in treating him the way I did, maintaining my distance. There were many days I thought it would just be better if we stayed away from one another completely. For his own good and mine. If we just never saw each other again. It would be a whole lot less painful for both of us.

I would only spend every minute of every one of those days apart missing him desperately. Missing his smile, his voice, even his stupid jokes that I thought I couldn't stand. . . .

Maybe I refused to take action for so long because I knew if I moved one way or another, I'd have to take responsibility for the choice I made, and all the fallout that came with it. Whenever I came close to doing anything about it, I had only to look at Tatsumi and Tsuzuki, and the strange, screwed-up relationship they had. I honestly have no idea what happened between them—both are a complete blank on that matter—but I can tell enough to know just how fragile the trust between them is now as a result of it, how it's marred by their respective, silent guilt, and how much it pains them to be alone together.

I did not want us to be like that. I didn't want Tsuzuki's smiles to grow even more hollow than they already were, or for him to resent me when our job demanded focus and open communication, all because of one selfish misstep.

Of course, more than any of that, I didn't want him to resent himself because of me either.

So, in all those years since Kyoto, I did nothing, thinking it was the best course of action I could take in a situation like ours: just pretend everything was business as usual.

It was a lie, and I must have known even then I couldn't keep it up forever. I knew someday I was going to have to choose one path or another, and was paralyzed by the fear that any way I leaned I was going to hurt him. Sometimes I wished he would just make my decision for me, just kiss me or something before I had a chance to stop him, take us somewhere we finally wouldn't be able to go backwards from, but he never did.

It would have made him too much like Muraki.  


* * *

We went about our job like nothing had changed, but I suppose it only stands to reason that it got to the point where it hurt, both physically and emotionally, to be around him. I spent more of my free time training with the sword and practicing my aim as a form of meditation—albeit because I knew his aversion to physical exercise would keep him from stepping foot in the dojo. But even the physical exertion wasn't enough to clear my mind of thoughts of Tsuzuki after a while. If I couldn't get away from him in body, then I jumped at the chance for new cases just so we would have something neutral to talk about—someone else's life and death and all the baggage that went with it, rather than our own.

It was around that time that I started seeing Wakaba outside of work. On those occasions when we both had a break, we would meet in Chijou for coffee or tea, sometimes lunch. That was how it started. We had never realized, working as we were in different areas of the country, how much we had in common. Namely Tsuzuki and Terazuma, who dominated our conversations at first. Listening to her stories about Terazuma only reminded me of Tsuzuki and the things he did, the quirks that annoyed me and made me smile, and I wondered if I was as transparent in my feelings when I talked about him as she was talking about her partner.

Aside from the occasional, temporary sub, which didn't really count, neither of us had ever had another partner since we came on as shinigami, so we were in the same boat, Wakaba and I—wondering if we were the only ones who felt like we did, oftentimes yearning to ditch our partners for new ones because we'd just gotten so frustrated we didn't think we could take it anymore, and secretly doubting we could survive the change.

Wondering if our affection for our respective partners was unique or just typical, something we would find again in each new working relationship. Or—given Tsuzuki and Terazuma's turbulent history with one another—if what each of us had really was the frighteningly rare thing we dreaded it was. But neither of us ever said as much out loud.

In any case, it was apparent to both of us we shared a common bond, even if it was under a rather thin pretext. We made time to see each other more frequently, which usually entailed playing video games at Wakaba's apartment. I was never that particular. At those times we both felt like teenagers—that is, like we were still alive and enjoying our teen years, spending them the way kids do, rather than being the adult souls bound in adolescent bodies that we were, stuck with all the awkwardness that came with them forever. We each thought of the other as a good friend and confidant. We cooked together. And we told our partners exactly what we were doing when they got jealous of our spending so much time together.

I would sometimes feel guilty that I wasn't pulling my weight in our relationship, though. I didn't have much in the way of interests—at least, none that weren't generally solitary—but it hardly seemed to matter since Wakaba had plenty to spare. Whether it was the cooking and video games, or photography, or needing a model for the men's clothes she was learning to sew. None of these things particularly interested me, but I found myself unconsciously trying to like them while I was around her. I had never praised anyone, but before long I was complimenting her on some outfit she had made, or having a long discussion on the art of photography and setting up the composition of a shot, or some other thing I didn't think I cared about. She made me feel like an active participant in our friendship, even if I was rather passive in reality. None of my unsocial character flaws even fazed her. She just plowed right through every indifferent remark I raised in my defense. I began to think I might be falling in love with her.

It wasn't like how I considered my feelings for Tsuzuki, wondering how many of them were just reflections of his emotions and not my own. With Wakaba—at least, so I told myself—that wasn't the case. Because I didn't know how she really felt about me. I didn't actually know whether she felt anything more for me than what she showed on the surface, and maybe, I think, a part of me didn't care to find out.

It had to come to a head someday. One afternoon as we were talking, I said something—I've forgotten what it was now—that made her laugh and say, “You don't know much about girls' bodies, do you?”

I was used to her frankness by now, but not to being frank myself. I blushed. “I guess not.”

Her eyes widened. “Have you ever even been with a girl? I mean romantically.”

“Don't you know?” I started to say, until I remembered the histories of our deaths were confidential. If she had heard, then she wouldn't have asked. Nor was I particularly eager to tell her about Muraki.

Or Kakyouin Tsubaki, for that matter. However interested we may have been in each other for those few short days, it hadn't ended well, and needless to say, my part in that ending was a matter I was still loath to face even in the privacy of my own thoughts. There was no way I was going to bring her up to Wakaba.

Seeing me open and shut my mouth like a fish, she said by way of apology, “Or a guy, for that matter.”

That just made me blush even worse. “Whatever gave you the impression I was like that?”

“Well, it's just . . . I guess I sort of thought . . . Aren't you and Tsuzuki—”

“No.” In the back of my mind, however, I was calling myself a liar. I couldn't rule out intention just because there was nothing to show for it. But still, I answered too quickly. “I can understand why you'd think that, he jokes about it all the time, but that's all it is. A joke.”

“Oh.” She looked down.

“Why do you care anyway?”

As soon as I said it I knew the answer. We were both lonely. Me with my fear, and she with her partner who was not only older, but could never be physically intimate with her—at least, not as long as he was possessed by his parasitic shikigami.

Except, unlike me, Wakaba actually knew what she wanted to do about it.

“Maybe it's just that you're so good at the sims,” she said with a lopsided smile that made her words seem anything but genuine, “I figured you must have had a lot of experience with the girls at school.”

“It's just empathy. Besides, these programs aren't hard to figure out,” I grumbled, at which she giggled. The sparkle returned to her bicolor eyes, even if it was at my expense, but that was enough to satisfy me.

Still, I couldn't escape the sensation of her loneliness. It seeped into me, only magnifying my own. I don't know if it was that that made me do it, or my half-convincing myself I was in love with her, or maybe some combination of the two, but I suggested we have sex.

It didn't sound right, like I was asking her whether she wanted milk in her coffee or something trivial like that, but the offer was out before I could blink, and there was no taking it back. I can't say what came over me, but at the time I thought of it as a kind of charity, albeit a warped kind of charity. Maybe I thought that by doing her this favor I could end her loneliness—her loneliness which, ironically, wouldn't leave me alone—and vicariously that which plagued me. She answered just as scientifically as I had asked, “Okay. I guess, sure. When? Now?”

We debated the best place to do it, whether a condom was necessary if we were already dead, things like that, and set up a time, all as if we were setting up an experiment. In a way, I guess, that's precisely what it was. Neither of us really knew what we wanted or how to go about getting it—whatever experience we had had in life left us completely unprepared—and yet we still acted as though we two souls of the deceased had something to lose.

We kissed. And kissed, waiting for our adolescent hormones to kick in, confident we still had them since we seemed to have the rest of the problems that came with being trapped in our teenage bodies. I'm not sure what we expected it to be like, but somehow we dragged ourselves through the motions. I laid her down on the couch, she ran her fingers through my hair, and her stiff, homemade skirt rode up as she rubbed a leg against mine. I slid my hand beneath her blouse. I could feel her pulse racing under my palm, and the heat of her blood—enough for the moment to make me forget we were dead. Her pelvis was hard against mine, her breasts by contrast disarmingly soft, the skin tightening at my touch. I waited to feel something, anything, but nothing came.

I looked up into her face and was able to see her clearly then, as though I had been talking to her with my head down this entire time, and I was shocked by what I saw. Her eyes were still closed as she waited for me to make another move, and she didn't say a word. She didn't have to for me to know that, no matter what I did, no matter how I touched her, she would only be thinking of Terazuma.

Strangely, that knowledge came as a relief. I wasn't sad to see what little desire I had managed to work up go with it. How could I be intimate with a person who was thinking of someone else during the act? For that matter, when I was wishing I was with someone else as well?

When I failed to make another move, she opened her eyes and narrowed them at me in concern. All of a sudden, she seemed so much older than fourteen—as old as she should have been, if not older. “What's wrong, Hisoka? You're not— I mean, you don't seem—”

“You don't really want to do this, do you?”

She opened her mouth to automatically deny it, then closed it on second thought, her whole body relaxing under me. “I don't think I can,” she whispered, like it was some shameful secret she was confiding in me. “I really thought I wanted to—and you're a great guy, Hisoka, really—but I'm sorry . . .”

“Don't be. I'm the one who's sorry. It was stupid of me to suggest it. I really don't know how I thought it would help.”

“It's not that. I mean, I know I said I would, but it's just—”

“No. It's okay.” She didn't have to say it. It wasn't like she had hurt my feelings by rejecting me, or like it had been too big a deal to back out of if one of us wanted to. If anything, I shuddered to think of what we might have done, had we forced ourselves to go through with it, to see it to its end, and made a decision we could not undo. “It wouldn't be right. I'm not really the one you want to be with anyway.”

I sat up on the sofa, and she did the same, straightening her skirt and holding herself close, suddenly modest. Careful not to let her shoulder touch mine as we both stared straight ahead at the far wall, if not at our knees.

“I just don't know,” she said after a long while, “if there's ever going to be a time I can be with him. You know?”

Yeah, I did. More than she knew. But I wasn't ready or willing to say it.

She sighed. “How am I supposed to . . . How am I supposed to live like this, Hisoka? I don't understand why, if I love him as much as I do, it should hurt this much just being around him. I mean, shouldn't that be enough? Do I really have to touch him to be happy? I can't even tell him how I feel, because I know he won't give me an honest response, and I don't know if it's because he can't, or he doesn't want to hurt me—or maybe he doesn't even feel the same way I do. Maybe I've just been reading him wrong this entire time. If that's the way it is . . . god . . . I don't know if I even want to know. I'd be too afraid to find out.”  


* * *

It was while we were in the middle of a case that I decided to tell Tsuzuki I was taking a break. There was nothing extraordinary about the case itself—just another soul who had gotten itself lost on the way to Meifu and was causing some trouble for the living—and maybe that was what ultimately made up my mind for me. Because it was just more of the same.

I broke the news to Tsuzuki over dinner on what must have been our second night in that town—that after this, I was taking a leave of absence.

“Really? It's about time. I would say you work yourself to death, but—”

“Ugh. That's bad, Tsuzuki, even for you.” I reached for my cup of tea, feeling the urge to wash out the bad taste his pun had left in my mouth. “And one of us has to in this partnership.”

“Yeah, yeah. So, where are you going?”

Cup to my lips, I froze. I hadn't given it that much thought. I'd been angsting the last few days about how I was going to break my decision to him without hurting him, I hadn't thought about details like that. They were important, just not to me, I guess.

I don't know why I was so surprised by his reaction, either—or rather, his lack of one. It was only a vacation. Everyone took them. It wasn't like I was running away. Was it?

“I . . . I don't know yet,” I admitted, and took a long drink.

“I know the leaves are supposed to be nice this time of year in Hakone, and Ise's always nice for relaxing. . . . But now's the best time for seafood up north. It's in season, so you can eat more for the same amount of money!”

“Tsuzuki . . . Is that all you ever think about?”

“Hey, even you can't complain about fresh—and _real_ —reasonably-priced king crab.”

“Yeah. You have a point there.”

It was almost enough to make me laugh. Or cry. I couldn't believe it. He was actually helping me plan my getaway—when he was the reason I felt I had to get away.

Some of my anxiety must have shown through, either on my face or in my voice. But his smile didn't waver as he said, “Something on your mind, Hisoka?”

At times like those, I wonder if this empathy of mine works both ways. Not only does Tsuzuki know when something's bothering me, but he seems to know when I really don't want to talk about it.

But there always comes a point when I just can't pretend anymore, and at that point he won't rest until he's gotten the story out of me. So I had to lie.

“It's just been a long time since I've had a proper vacation,” I told him. And after the words left my mouth, I actually believed them. “I mean, we took that trip to Hokkaido with Tatsumi and Watari, but that was something completely different. I can't remember the last time I had the opportunity to travel by myself. All those other breaks the chief made me take I usually just spent hanging around home.”

“You having second thoughts?”

“It's not that. . . .” I sighed. I wasn't really sure how to put it myself—at least, without telling the absolute, brutal truth. “I am looking forward to having the chance to get my thoughts together.”

“You don't sound that excited about it. You know if something's weighing on your mind, you can always talk to me about it, right?”

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. It was incredible to me the way he saw through everything I said and yet didn't at the same time. Maybe it was just a sort of knee-jerk reaction with him, to say things like this, to offer his services to a friend, and maybe he wasn't as good at reading me as I feared. Then again, maybe that easy smile was for his benefit, not mine. Could he read the guilt on my face? Did he know I was doing this to get away from _him_?

But I told myself there was no way he could know that, and put that worry behind me.

“I'm looking forward to seeing all these places I never got to when I was alive, too,” I was quick to say when I had recovered my thoughts. “You know, all these sites that you read about in history books in high school that I've just never really had time for since I've been here.”

“And yet you haven't decided what those places are yet.”

“I . . . I have some idea—”

“Yeah? Name one.”

I mumbled the first thing to come to mind. “The Meiji emperor's tomb?”

Tsuzuki made a sound of disapproval at that so loud I thought the whole restaurant would hear. “Boring! You finally get some time off to explore the country on your own, and you want to go visit some mossy tomb of someone you never cared about? You don't want to go hiking or relax at a spa—”

“Do I look like the spa type to you?”

I was beginning to lose my patience with him, but when he laughed I had to realize how trivial our conversation sounded. Like just another one of our petty arguments where he started whining and I gave him the cold shoulder and we both came away satisfied that justice had been served. How could I impress on him that right now, with this subject, I was trying to be serious, without having to bring my actual reasons out in the open? He had already let me dig myself deeper into a hole with all my excuses. I wonder if he was even aware of what he was doing to me.

“Look,” I said, this time quite a bit shorter than I'd intended, “this is my own vacation this time, so wherever I decide to go is my decision, all right? I don't have to justify it to you, just because we're partners or something. I know you always want to be involved in everything I do, but did it ever occur to you that some things I might just not want to talk about? I still have that right, don't I?”

I stuffed a bite of food in my mouth more because I didn't want to say any more on the matter than because I actually had an appetite left to fill. I didn't want to hear any more of his jokes either, even if he did mean well, and I could see them all dropping by the wayside with his smile. It hadn't been the most polite way of putting my feelings out there—it was more than he deserved for just trying to make conversation—but how else was he going to get the clue to drop the subject?

I probably did myself more harm than good in the end. I could practically see the questions forming in his mind after I'd said all that. Was I taking this vacation so I could do something I didn't want him to know about? Something that might be against the laws of Meifu? Was I going to go and meet someone, or get myself involved in something dangerous? Should he be worried about me? Did this mean I was going to be out of touch for the entirety of my leave? Was I leaving because of something he did?

None of that was actually something I could feel coming off of Tsuzuki—he had shut himself off from me somewhere around that mention of the Meiji emperor's tomb—but, like I said, I could all but see the wheels turning. And it wasn't hard to guess what he must have been thinking. God knows, that's what I would have been wondering about him if our positions were reversed.

And I was pretty sure I'd hit the nail on the head when he said, softly, “I didn't realize it was a sensitive subject.”

He had lowered his gaze and his chopsticks, poking something around on his plate having apparently arrived at the same conclusion I had: that the best way to drop the subject was to become suddenly all too interested in the food.

But even if he was shielding his emotions, I could sense enough of them in his body language, and it was too much to just let slide without saying anything.

“I'm sorry, Tsuzuki, I shouldn't have . . . You didn't deserve that.”

“No, _I'm_ sorry. Really. I should have realized earlier that you really didn't want to talk about it and not pried so much. This is your vacation and I don't want it to be ruined because of something careless I said.”

I blinked up at him. He was apologizing for distressing me, but it felt like it should have been the other way around.

“You are going to enjoy yourself, right?”

It took me a moment to come back to myself and answer. “M-m. Yeah. I'm gonna be so relaxed I won't want to come back.”

I hadn't said it with the enthusiasm those words deserved, but it made Tsuzuki break into a grin anyway.

“Now _that's_ something I would have to see to believe. Hey, it got me thinking. . . .”

And then he launched into some other more trivial subject. I don't even remember what anymore because even as I was listening, I was still thinking about what I had said to him, and how easily he had shrugged it off. Too easily for me to believe he would just forget what had passed between us.


	2. Chapter 2

A large part of why I was so reluctant to talk about my upcoming trip was that I didn't want Tsuzuki—or anyone else, for that matter—to know I was going to Kamakura. My hometown. Even though it had stopped feeling like home more than a decade ago. I made reservations in Hakone for appearances' sake—and in case anyone asked me about my trip. For that matter, I didn't even plan to go to Kamakura. I just knew in the back of my mind as I counted down the days to the start of my vacation that that was where I would end up.

Like something was pulling me toward it. Maybe it was because of the night I met Muraki. Maybe it had more to do with the family I had left behind. Or it could have been as simple as a nostalgic sort of curiosity, a desire—no, more like an involuntary, maddening itch to go back with the different, more removed sort of perspective that time gives you and see if anything finally made sense.

Not that there was anything there I missed. Or anyone. But something drew me there, like a gaping hole in my soul that needed to be filled. An unanswered question. If only subconsciously, I knew there was something missing from my own memory of my death—some clue that would help me to understand what had happened to myself, and what I had been, that had remained hidden from me all this time.

Becoming a shinigami is a tricky thing. You leave your memories of your life behind you when you take on your new semi-corporeal form. Or, perhaps it's fairer to say a sort of wall is erected between them and you. Sometimes you can see through it; sometimes images are blurry like through frosted glass; but most of the time the wall is opaque, or the other side is obscured by a one-way mirror, and you're too preoccupied with the here-and-now to really care enough to investigate what's on the other side. Eventually, for most shinigami, the memories come back, in bits and pieces until you have a more or less complete picture of the person you were, but by then it's like all that stuff happened to someone else.

It almost has to be that way, in order for you to function in your new capacity, in a new existence. Like they say our brains have built-in mechanisms to block out our memories of being born—otherwise, the trauma would cripple us for the rest of our lives—shinigami have to “forget” the moment of their death in order not to destroy themselves as soon as they're made. Only later can the details slowly trickle back in, the idea being that, by that time, you're so comfortable in your new “life,” the knowledge of your actual death will feel so distant and disconnected from your present reality, it will no longer be able to hurt you.

But some of us never get to be that lucky. Some of us, like me and Tsuzuki, have so many skeletons in our past—either forced on us or put there by our own selves—that someone decided it was better for us not to know. Whether that was Enma, though, or something in our own subconscious, a safety measure hardwired into us for self-preservation—well, it's impossible to ever know for sure, isn't it?

But the not-knowing still sticks with you, follows you around like your own shadow, getting longer the darker your knowledge becomes. It gets to the point you feel like you _have_ to know or it will kill you.

And then the knowing itself will kill you all over again.

That's how it was with me and Muraki. I thought that once I had all the pieces of my death reassembled into some graspable whole, my problems would be solved. In reality, that was only when they started, and there was no way I could have been prepared for the pain that followed as I was forced to relive my own torture and death, again and again. Not to mention the unquenchable rage that that nurtured within me—for my murderer and for everything that was taken away from me, and every injustice that was done to me. That rage has never really gone away. It just recedes into the background, until the next time I'm confronted with the memory of that night.

So why would I go to Kamakura, where I lived the first thirteen years of my life, and where I was brutally murdered, if I was only going to subject myself to reliving all the agony of those last moments yet again?

Because where my life up until that point was concerned, I still had questions left completely unanswered.

In my time as a shinigami, I had learned everything I could possibly want to know—and much more than I ever did—about Muraki's time with me. But I still knew next to nothing about the time I had spent with my family, growing up in a house I had only the vaguest, shadowy recollections of, with a mother and father who were only faceless forms to me now, hazy and in shadow when I tried to look at them above the waist. Had I repressed my memory of them? Or had those memories been systematically blocked by Enma when I became a shinigami? I couldn't be sure, but I suspected it was some combination of both. There was something in my past, I reasoned, that I'd kept myself from remembering, and something the establishment I now worked for didn't want me to know.

And I hated that.

More than any filial desire to know the people who gave me life, I hated that there were forces beyond my control deliberately trying to keep me in the dark. I've always pushed back when I was told “no,” always wanted to do the very thing that was forbidden to me, if only to see for myself _why_ it should be forbidden. It's always been in my nature to push, push, push. . . .

And nothing cuts to the heart of what my nature is than the knowledge of what I was. I needed that. It was the next step to making me whole.

I harbored no illusions that it wouldn't be as difficult as confronting the truth about my death, or my ultimately futile first attempt to win a guardian spirit. I was prepared for a struggle, for pain.

I wasn't prepared for the emptiness.  


* * *

It was a bizarre feeling, to say the least, walking around the town that I had grown up in, a town I still knew my way around but whose every street corner felt eerily new to me. Alien. I happened across my old middle school, but it felt so small and dark to me now. Hostile. I couldn't believe I had actually attended classes there once, if only for half a year, and that all those little flashes of familiarity weren't just some strange dream, a late-night TV movie I had watched half-asleep and mistaken for a memory from my own life. The bakery my mother would take me to sometimes, on those special occasions we would go into Kamakura proper, or the park with the slide in the shape of an elephant—had it all really looked this way all these years?

All these places I had vague memories of once frequenting appeared in front of me, yet I could hardly approach them without feeling that queer sensation, like an astronaut who's landed on some distant planet and found it looking just like home, down to the last detail. The only detail that can't be replicated is the _feel_ of a place, the emotions, and that was one detail that just felt wrong. It felt like I shouldn't have been there. That maybe I had never been there to begin with. If I had, would I really feel so numb?

Yet somehow, the stronger that feeling stuck with me, the more I knew I was right to have come.

The city and the hills surrounding it are full of temples. And, with nothing else to do, biding my time until I could figure out why I'd come back, I visited them one by one, playing tourist in my old hometown. School groups were getting their pictures taken with the giant Buddha. Older folks visiting from out of town and foreigners with huge backpacks were washing their money at the Benten shrine. I paid my respects to the Kannon at the Hasedera, and had a cup of tea beside the temple bell at the Engakuji, and stuck to the busy trails. I might prefer my solitude generally, but I had no desire to be alone among the dense trees that covered just about everything off the beaten path, no matter how beautiful the colors might have been at that time of year. There was something about the forest that remained too dark even for my comfort. Something, I think, that reminded me—and not in a good way—of home, and of the older traditions that had always seemed so important to father, more ancient and mist-shrouded than anything open to tourists.

Besides, there was something to be said for the comfort of the crowd. Listening to a conversation between friends at the teahouse or watching others soak in the peace of the landscape actually allowed me to relax. Maybe I've gotten better at controlling my empathy over the years, but I do think that it actually helped my own mood to be surrounded by the emotional white noise of a thousand strangers enjoying themselves, without forcing myself to concentrate on any single one.

I suppose I could have made myself invisible to the living people around me—considering it was my hometown, and being there carried the risk of being recognized, that would have only been wise—but I preferred to be seen. And, subsequently, to blend into the crowd. I can't really explain such an uncharacteristic urge except to say that if I didn't make myself visible and tangible, I felt like I might disappear into those woods and the rocks and all the languages and feelings that surrounded me, that it might be like I never even existed. I even caught myself feeling relief when couples asked me to take pictures of them in front of landmarks with their cameras, or schoolgirls stared at me as we passed. It might sound like a contradiction, but even though I needed to be by myself, I didn't want to be alone.

I needed some assurance that I was really there, perhaps even more so in a place I knew I was not supposed to be. In lieu of this strange feeling that I didn't belong in this place, I at least needed the comfort that I belonged to the human race, even if it was only ironically, only after I had passed out of the world of the living and become something . . . different. Separate. Something other.

The first night, I was lucky to find a cheap hotel that had some vacant rooms. I wasn't picky. If they had a separate room and bed, and took my money, that was good enough for me. Tsuzuki would have scolded me for skipping dinner, but I really wasn't hungry that night either. (It wasn't as though I _needed_ food.) And even if I had been, I had no particular desire to go looking around for a place to eat.

I spent the evening on the beach instead. The autumn sun had set behind the mountains hours ago, and it was pitch black and freezing next to the water, but the cold air helped clear my head of all I had seen and felt that day. It allowed me to gather my thoughts together, file them in the appropriate places, and recharge my defenses before I made the trip I dreaded but knew I had to take.

The trip back home.

To that ancient house where I'd been imprisoned for the better part of my life, where neither my parents nor the maids had been allowed to say anything to me about the mysterious terrors that would keep the household up some nights.

Into the woods and thick brush of the grounds that, even when I was a child, filled me with a dark, cold fear that something was lurking in them, biding its time, like the pulsing heart of a volcano before it erupts.

And into that old grove of cherry trees. . . .

I wasn't sure which I was looking forward to less.

* * *

I dreamed that night of my old middle school. Though I'd only attended class there for a few months, the classrooms and hallways were vivid enough in my memory that the whole place came back. The old-varnishy smell of the hardwood hallway floors when the sunlight hit them. The bright crunch of gravel under my feet in the archery field behind the gym. The sudden echo of laughter that even in a dream had the ability to tie my stomach up in knots. . . .

All those people are gone now, I told myself when I woke up. Graduated and grown up, moving on with their lives. How many of them would even remember me if we passed on the street? I vanished from their lives so soon after coming into them, who could be expected to remember someone like me?

I was always a loner. I knew no other way to be. Until then, I was essentially home-schooled in a tiny, ancient village school house among a handful of other village children—who barely talked to me, and when they did play with me, were distant and fearful or cruel.

When—after much debate between my parents on the matter, I remember that much—I was allowed the great privilege of attending middle school in Kamakura, I passed through my classes like a ghost. My grades were better than most, but my name seldom topped the list of my class's rankings. Maybe I just never applied myself as much as I could have. I remember spending most of my time studying, but I never felt like I was expending an extraordinary amount of effort on schoolwork. It was simply an escape from the world, something I did so I wouldn't have to think about my own life, or feel lonely. No different from the playmates and stories I invented for myself as a child: So I wouldn't have to think about who I was or what I was a part of, or where I was going.

And it worked. I never did. I might have envied the other kids I'd see walking together and enjoying one another's company, but there wasn't anyone whose company I particularly desired to be in. When it came down to it, if I felt anything other than indifference towards anyone, it was usually resentment. Not that it wasn't deserved, I told myself. Did I ever reject any offers of friendship? Quite the opposite. I would have welcomed them, if anyone had made offers. At least, that's what I told myself. But the point is moot, because no one ever did.

What they did make were not-so-secret comments behind my back about my eyes being such a strange shade of green, or about me being behind the other boys in physical development, and they distrusted me for being a Kurosaki, coming from that village. I know I was aloof, but they said I acted like I was better than all of them; and why would anyone want to be friends with someone like that?

My father and his brother often talked of our family's superiority, something in our ability to trace our line back to the middle ages. It must have been passed down to them from their father, and perhaps I got it from them in turn, like a genetic disease, developing in me without any conscious effort on my part. I hated the men in my family for their blind obsession with lineage, but I also hated my classmates for keeping their distance from me because of what they heard about our line—all those whispers about ghosts and curses for some distant ancestor's sins. I could not help who I was any more than they could help who they were, and I hated that they weren't able to see past stupid superstitions.

Although, at the same time, I think, I grabbed on to that anger, that hatred for their distrust, and made it my reason for being. In a way, I embraced it, and, just like my father, used it to justify my sense of otherness. Maybe I even believed I was better for it. It was easy being what they wanted me to be. Easier than trying to change, anyway—easier than reaching out, and falling short every time.

So I channeled my frustration into archery and kendo. I hated how much weaker I was than the other kids my age, and taking up those traditional forms of martial arts, forms I didn't have to use my feet or fists or grapple anyone to be good at, made me feel that much more in control of my own body, and my own destiny. I might not have been able to shoot a basket, or hit a home run, but I could hit a target better than most. If I had to, I thought, I could strike an opponent down in battle, like the hero who founded our clan. No wars were ever won with baseball bats, but arrows and swords had served the samurai class for centuries.

A lot of good it did me. For all that practice, I was useless against Muraki, and my own fear. And none of it was the least bit helpful in preparing me for my own latent demons.

* * *

I must have been around eight or nine when I first started reading people's emotions. Or, at least, that was when I first became aware of it.

Of course, for a long time, I didn't understand what I was doing, or that it was something that no one else could do. It started out as sporadic incidents, like all of a sudden I would feel the jealousy or boredom or admiration of one of the children sitting next to me in class, and it would feel just as if it were my own. I'd wonder why I started feeling that way when I couldn't logically see what had brought the emotion on. I began to think there was something wrong with something in my body—or worse, that I was going crazy.

My mother would often say that I seemed to know just when she needed cheering up, just like a little dog, but I never thought twice about it. It's just the sort of thing mothers say about their children, and I didn't feel any different. She certainly was never the kind of woman whose emotional state was difficult to read. So I never made the connection. I never thought that I was particularly intuitive with her. I certainly never thought what I felt while sitting in class, or the way it made me feel to see mother on one of her down days, were in any way related.

Then one day, I reached out to take a test back from my teacher, and, like an electric shock rippling down the paper, I felt an overwhelming sense of resentment. Resentment for our class and his own lot, being trapped in our backwards little town teaching it, resentment for my parents—and for me in particular, who apparently he had always thought of as an ungrateful snob of a child and the source of all his troubles.

I was stunned. As if I were seeing myself through his eyes, through the filter of his own thoughts and experience, a tide of self-loathing suddenly crashed over me. It was too much for my childhood ego to take. I don't know how I managed to make it out of that classroom without shaking and crying for the shame I felt. It must have been sheer shock that kept my face straight in my teacher's presence.

But even then, I failed to understand what was happening, that these were not isolated incidents, and I was not imagining these things. At that point, I couldn't begin to imagine how it all worked, and that rather than me just knowing things, the emotions of others were seeping into me, pushing and pulling me in ways I had no control over.

For all I thought I had grown up, I was still so much a sheltered child then. I had no way of knowing that the changes taking place inside me were something I needed to repress, or at very least keep to myself, a secret not to be shared with or trusted to anyone. How could I possibly have known that?

Until I learned it through my own experience. Until the secret slipped out, and there was no way I could ever cover it up again.

* * *

It was shortly before my thirteenth birthday. The second term of my first year in a real private school in the city had just begun, and to celebrate the success of my first term—or so the story went—my parents arranged a small get-together at the house. There weren't many guests, just my uncle Iwao and his wife and a few of his connections, all folks in high places in society. None of them were there for my benefit, even if that was the pretense for gathering them there. I dressed in my school uniform; mother and father in their best kimono, and our guests likewise. Our house had always been dark, the weight of the ages constantly being pressed upon it, like layers of sediment trying to preserve it for future generations; and that evening had that air of a throwback to eras long past, like something from an old black-and-white movie. I remember that impression clearly.

And just like an old movie, the conversation bored me. Our guests tired pretty soon of asking me questions about school—which I was thankful for—but I wasn't allowed to leave the room even after that, and suffered through dinner feeling tense, like there was a huge knot in my stomach, or something was pinching my ear to keep me awake.

At some point, I realized my anxiety had nothing to do with me. One of uncle's associates' wives was having an affair, and didn't want her husband, sitting next to her, to know what she had only recently done about the baby. I didn't know how I knew that. I just knew that I did. With the same utter certainty that I knew the sky was blue and water wet.

And worse. The woman's husband had lost a large sum of money on a bet at some baccarat club—whose hostesses he'd hooked up with on more than one occasion himself—and was stealing from his company to make up for it. The other man just thought about getting drunk on father's sake and having sex with girls—girls my age, girls that kind of looked like me, except with perky little breasts and without dicks between their legs, but even that might not be so bad if they felt the same when you put it in them.

Uncle's thoughts weren't twisted in that sort of way, but the resentment I felt from him was almost more overpowering than the rest. He hated father so much, for this farce of a dinner party, where he couldn't even play the host for these louts he'd invited because of some cruel decision of grandfather's. And for me, for the disappointment that I was, in physique and personality and my lack of accomplishments.

And for what he'd become himself, for being the first-born and yet passed over as heir to the Kurosaki family—only to see his brother make one rotten decision after another, first marrying that woman, who gave him this sickly waif in place of a son. . . . What sin had he committed to deserve such a disgrace? Surely nothing that couldn't be corrected. He'd killed before, shot plenty of birds and deer on his hunts, could it be so different killing a man? There was that one time, when father had been out of town . . . and it hadn't been so hard. In a way, it had even felt good, a relief even, finishing the deed. He could do it again, if he had to do it. If it became necessary. If it was his duty. . . .

Thankfully, whatever mother and father were feeling at the time, I couldn't tell. They held their emotional cards close to their chests, assuming in front of others the airs they thought people wanted to see, playing their roles so well they managed to fool themselves. They were even so good at hiding things from each other, I never could tell if they were in love, or ever had been. But that night, I had more than enough on my plate without having to deal with the overflow from them as well.

Usually I had to touch someone in order to feel what they were feeling. But that night, for some reason, maybe the sheer amount of anxious energy in the room, all I needed to do was sit beside them. As the hours progressed, it only got worse and worse, as the distance between what was said and the truth trapped underneath grew more and more strained. Uncle spoke of filial piety, while his pervert friend went on about the virtues of instructing young minds as a high school teacher. I couldn't eat more than a bite of dinner. I wanted to vomit, I was cramped up so much inside by their hypocrisy. And when the other couple spoke of their devotion to each other and wanting to start a family, I couldn't keep it bottled up inside me any longer. I felt like if I did a moment more, I was going to explode.

I called them all liars. Though I think the cheating couple got the brunt of it. They'd been controlling the conversation just then, so it was their secrets that spilled out of me in the greatest detail.

To her credit, the wife was a decent actress. To a point. “Darling, you don't honestly believe I'd do that to you, do you? He's obviously making it up,” she told her husband when the initial shock at my outburst wore off. She even laughed a little, nervously, looking to my mother for sympathy. “He's of an age for it. Isn't that right, Rui-san?”

When her husband could come up with nothing to say, her forced smile fell. “What? Why don't you deny it? You're not saying it's— You mean it's _true?_ ” She hit him, and screamed at him, called him all sorts of names and threatened to kill him. And when he accused her of doing the things that I'd said she had, she no longer cared how it made her look. She rubbed it in his face like a dog's nose in shit.

Then she blamed me.

My uncle tried to gain control the situation. He said there was no reason for me to say these things about anyone. I couldn't have known anything, unless someone had told me. “Who told you these lies, Hisoka?”

“You all did,” I said. To me, whether I heard it from their mouths or their souls—it made no difference. It was still true. I didn't know why _I_ should be the one blamed for telling the truth.

Everyone was shouting at once, mother and father among them, trying their best to assure their guests they had not set me up to humiliate the rest of the party. These revelations had come as just as much of a shock to them. Everyone denied ever saying a word to me—and why would they blab such dark secrets to a kid of thirteen?

I just know, I kept saying to them over and over again, and why didn't they believe me? That was the truth of it. _I just knew._

Mother laughed. The child's ill, he's been sickly all his life, she told our company, quite a turnaround from the intuitive, lovely boy she'd always bragged about to her friends. You have to forgive him. He doesn't know what he's saying. He has a history of acting out, being an only child—imaginary friends and all that. And who could blame him, growing up in this village, with the things people say around here? He doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction half the time.

But I did. I told her so. And then, the way she looked at me in that moment, I knew the truth of it.

The words slipped out before I had time to think about what they might mean: _You're not my mother._

She slapped me. There. In front of everyone. The cheating couple, the pervert teacher, my uncle and his wife. “And you're not my son!”

Everyone stared in shock. Father feared a dark truth on the verge of emerging from where it had been buried, and uncle seemed to suspect; but what he suspected, what father feared, I couldn't know. My ability, my curse—whatever you want to call it—it was like a light that had blown out with that slap. I knew what had happened, how I'd gotten to that point, sitting on the floor holding my stinging face, but now it seemed like it had happened to someone else. Like it had happened in an old movie.

Uncle saw the guests out. He ushered them quickly from the room, apologizing through his teeth, while mother—in her own kind of apology—tried desperately to set it right: “That's not my son,” she told father, hoping he would see the difference in her meaning. “That's not my Hisoka talking. You have to believe me. There's no way he could _know_ things like that. I'm telling you, that's not like him!”

Then what was it like, father asked her.

She didn't know. She shook her head, and grasped at the only explanation that made sense to her: “A demon.”

* * *

I never went back to school after that night. For a while, father promised that when I was well enough, once they had figured out what ailed me and corrected the problem, I would be able to resume my education in Kamakura.

But days passed, then weeks, one attempt after another to “fix” my condition ending in disappointment for them and illness for me. I only scared the doctors with the things I knew about them, and each test, each therapy session, each new regimen only left me feeling weak and susceptible to whatever bug was floating around at the time.

And in the meantime, my powers of empathy did not go away. If anything, without some other sort of stimulus to distract me from my thoughts, I became even more open to the feelings of those around me. They tormented me, pained me, and none more so than the terror that stowed away aboard every person who came near me. Terror that what I had, what afflicted me, was not something that medical science could explain but something more unusual, more unnatural. Something that even the least superstitious still feared in the pit of his subconscious: something ancient, dark, and evil.

One doctor, suspecting a kind of schizophrenia was to blame, tried to treat me with electroshock therapy. But I screamed so much for days afterwards, my whole head a cacophony of pain and voices, that my parents took me away and threatened to sue the man for malpractice. If I had been in my own mind at the time, I might have taken that as a sign they still loved me.

But what they did after that suggested otherwise.

Our family's house was as massive as it was old, with twisted corridors and cellars that hadn't been used for hundreds of years. There were cells in one half of the house where, generations ago, family members who suffered mental illness were kept by their saner loved ones—to protect the afflicted from themselves as much as the public. That was where I ended up. And it was for my own good, they told me, just like my ancestors must have been told, over and over so I should never forget it. It wouldn't be so bad. My room got sunlight in the late afternoon, and a maid brought me meals at the same times as before my illness—albeit “adjusted” so as not to cause “flare-ups” of my condition. If I asked for books, sometimes I even got them, if they weren't deemed too suggestive for my fragile state of mind. And besides, all this was only temporary—just until I was feeling better.

But the room was dank and cold, and what little light I got came through wooden bars, always reminding me I was in a cage. I was let out a few times a week for supervised walks in the garden, but always ended up back in my cell, no matter how improved my condition seemed. And the maid who brought my meals had either been instructed not to talk to me, or was too afraid. Who knew what they were saying about my “disease,” what rumors were getting around the village?

Even my parents had no idea what had caused my illness, or how to cure it. Father had shut himself off to me long before, but he was even more silent and impassive now, and would only stand outside my cage and watch me on the bad days, the days my head felt like it would explode from all the stuff packed in it. As if I were an animal, and people like him just didn't talk to animals, because what would be the point? Sometimes he would think about snakes, all sorts of snakes and serpent forms, and about blood and darkness, and I was ashamed that I had done this to him, that he would think of me as something so low, something that only deserved to be crushed. Something that, had I been anything other than a human being, and his son, he might have put down. He would talk to the doctors who occasionally came to see me, even an exorcist or two—no doubt at my mother's request—but I never heard him say a word to me. All I had to go on were those disturbing images.

He said plenty to mother, though. I would hear them down the hall as he tried unsuccessful to console her. Every time she came to visit me, no matter how civil she was to my face, no matter how much she claimed to pray every day that I would get better, her disgust and fear and anger would hit me like a never-ending stab to the gut, and I would hear her wailing outside my room.

Always the same thing:

 _That is_ not _my son._

 _That is not_ my _Hisoka._

 _It's a monster. It must be. That's not the child I gave birth to!_

 _There's only one solution for this, Nagare. Your brother—he says it must be done. There are ways . . . He wouldn't have to suffer. And it won't be the first time . . . in this family. . . . You do trust your brother, don't you?_

Or other times: _Don't let them take him. My child, Nagare—_ she's _trying to take my boy from me! I know it's her. This is my punishment, Nagare. She'll do anything to hurt me. For what I've done . . . I'm telling you, she's trying to take him from me!_

I don't know what mysterious “she” she was talking about. If any of the maids took pity on me, they didn't have enough to let me out of that prison, or contact the authorities. It would have done them no good anyway; the local police were in the pocket of Uncle Iwao, and he never showed any indication of lifting a finger to help me.

It wouldn't have mattered, anyway. All I wanted from mother was for her to love me like she once had, but no one could make her feel what she couldn't feel, and all I was left with from her visits was hate. There was nothing I could do, no words I could say to put it right. I had betrayed her, but I couldn't even help it. I couldn't change what I was. I couldn't turn off my disease. Whether I had been born this way or done something to deserve it—it didn't matter one way or another, because there was nothing I could do to change it.

I never did get to see the school house in Kamakura or my classmates ever again. Not even the uniform I'd worn that night everything changed. Though, by the end, I'm sure, I had lost so much weight from all the tests and procedures—and I'd barely been a normal weight to begin with—I'm sure it would have hung pathetically on me.

All the tests they had put me through, the pain I was in constantly from the latest treatment or the emotional toll it was wreaking on my parents, and therefore on me—I couldn't stand it anymore. Six long months I spent locked in that old cell, lost in my own mind, in agony. I knew I couldn't live like that. I began to plan my escape.

I don't think I really need to go into what happened next. It's fairly common knowledge by now:

The night I finally managed to do it, that night in the early spring, the night of the lunar eclipse—the night I was finally able to free myself, was the night I ran into Muraki at the most unfortunate of moments. Too afraid to do anything, too petrified by what I was seeing to even run, I witnessed him killing that woman.

Then I witnessed everything he did and felt as he raped and tortured me, and cursed me to a slow and agonizing death.

* * *

I should not have gone back. Everything that I had learned as a shinigami and everything that had been carved in to my bones by that sadist told me to stay away.

But that morning, I set it all aside and set out for the village where I was born. I boarded a little bus—a route so unfrequented, it only made two round-trips a day, and most of the seats were vacant—and I headed up into the interior with a handful of locals and diehard tourists, into the old woods bound for a village so small it didn't even have its name on the map.

Talk about a scene from an old movie. Somehow my memories of Kamakura had been more vivid than my memories of the town where I grew up, so I was surprised to see it did look like some set of Restoration Japan that had been preserved for tourists, or to show visiting school kids what country life had been like a hundred years ago. There were some modern buildings—or at least, buildings that would have been cutting-edge at the turn of the twentieth century—like the old train depot and police station, and a newer gas station/convenience store at the very edge of town. But the farther we went in, the sparser the restaurants and storefronts became, and the more traditional the architecture.

The bus let us off in the village center. I hardly recognized the place in the daylight, without all the streamers and paper lanterns. On festival nights, the square had been a dreamy swirl of scents and sounds and color to my childhood imagination. Those had been good times, back when father still talked to me and mother still hugged me and called me her little boy, and passersby gave me gifts of toys and candy as if I were someone special, someone important. Back when the thrill of watching fireworks and the terror of a demon play could all mix innocently together in my mind, without any sense of a looming threat—like I felt now as I returned to it.

I had forgotten those festival nights completely until that moment. Perhaps in my time as a shinigami, I'd simply never had the chance nor the need to recall them, even though I'd attended other festivals with Tsuzuki and the rest since then. Maybe the reason why I could never lose myself in the celebrations like some of our coworkers could was tied up in those memories. Even my earliest experience with festivals had been marred by the knowledge of dark things—knowing we could only celebrate because something bad had happened long ago, and had only ended through much sacrifice. We could only be happy now because we had made it through the darkness, if not unscathed, at least intact.

But what was that bad thing? What was the source of darkness, and what sacrifice had been made to end it? I thought that I might have a better sense of it all when I reached my old home.

My feet knew the way, so I let them take me. Made myself invisible so I wouldn't be recognized; but also because I had a feeling, if someone knew where I was going, they would try to stop me. And I didn't want to be stopped.

I left the cracked, paved streets of the heart of the village and started up a dirt road. Old houses passed on either side of me, some which must have supported generations of families, all in some way tied to the Kurosaki clan, through service or some other symbiotic kind of history. Knowing a shortcut, I took a turn into the tall, overgrown grass and scraggily bushes. Everything was yellow and brittle around me, half the trees losing their leaves and showing how lined and gnarled their ancient trunks truly were. I wondered if they remembered me, because I felt like I should remember them. Did they bear witness to my life and death? Were they here when the village was new—did they see the deed that the festival commemorated each year?

But they told me nothing. My powers don't work with trees—if they even have anything to say. But they did seem to point me on. I walked through fields gone to seed that I had played in as a young kid, playing games with other children from the village, imagining the katydids and lightning bugs were my friends.

Before father shut me up. Before I became to this town like something carrying plague. I remembered the village kids' jokes, and how easily they would make me cry. How cruel I thought they were, and yet I always went to play with them again. I didn't have anyone else.

Then I turned a corner along a narrow deer path, and I saw it. It was smaller than I'd imagined in my memory, and darker, if that was possible, like the whole thing had been carved out of burned logs and given a lead roof. I could see the gates, and trace out the path I would have taken when I arrived home from the old schoolhouse on the hill—which hallways I would have walked down, careful not to make the old floorboards squeak and give me away, which rooms I would have visited. Where I ate. Where I sat to watch the garden birds in the summer. It was all there, laid out before me like a model of my life in miniature.

I couldn't move. If I'd still had a real heart, it would have stopped in my chest. I couldn't believe I was finally here—that it was real, and I hadn't just imagined it this whole time, just a fantasy I'd created to make me think I was alive at one point when I'd really been dead all along.

But I hadn't made it up.

I _had_ been born here. I grew up here. I died here. And now that I was here once again, I didn't know what to do.

The place did, though. It called to me. It pulled at me, like a wave drawing me further out, undulating in serpentine fashion. Bewitching me and beckoning me inward, toward the old house and the grounds with the lake and the cherry trees, congratulating me that I had finally made it, saying _here_ was where I'd finally find my answers . . .

 _Not yet_ , a voice said within me before I could give in. _You can't go in there till you have the proper ammunition._

And I almost laughed that that voice of reason, telling me not to go, sounded in my head like Tsuzuki's voice.

I don't know why it should be anything to laugh at. It just makes sense. If there was anyone I had come to trust more than any other, anyone whose advice I was likely to listen to and take to heart, it was Tsuzuki's. There was something endearing about it, to think I had been around him for so long, and he had so much influence over me, that I should hear my own conscience speaking to me in his voice instead of any other.

So I heeded the advice, and took a step back.

Then another.

Each one became exponentially easier as I turned and quietly fled that place. Not forever. No, I knew I would eventually come back—it was what I had made this trip for in the first place—but now was not the right time. I wasn't yet ready to face everything that had happened to me, everything that had made me what I was.

At that point, I wasn't even sure what that was. I had very little knowledge with which to tackle that place. My history was filled with too many blanks for me. Like I would with any opponent I had to face, I needed to prepare. I had to know what I was up against.  


* * *

So I headed for the local library. It was a small building, little bigger than your average izakaya and sturdy, built in the war era. But as tight-knit communities like ours generally are, it had full and detailed records about every family that had ever lived in the village—and none more so than its caretakers, the Kurosakis.

I couldn't be seen there either. Our village isn't a big one; people don't tend to leave once they're there, and new blood is rare. If there was even a remote chance someone might recognize me, I had to take proper precautions. So I made myself invisible to the living, and only returned after the library had been closed for the night to start the serious digging.

Alone with the village records, I was able to peruse at my leisure, but I was disappointed to find . . . well, that I didn't find much of any use to me.

My family tree was there, or what of it was made public record. Most of it, straight lines of descendancy; very few siblings; androgynous, single-character names. I knew better than to take it at face value. My own sister was left off the records. Or, perhaps, her death just hadn't been recorded, and therefore neither had my birth when I supplanted her. The only evidence I even had that she'd existed was the gravestone off in one corner of our property, half-buried in the weeds and the brambles. Father had taken me to see it once, pulling me along though the brambles scratched my arms, before finally confessing to me that the headstone that bore my name didn't belong to me, but to a stillborn, older sister I never knew.

Ever since then, I hated it. It wasn't a particularly feminine name, but it was nonetheless a girl's, and since that day I found out it wasn't my own and mine alone, I secretly resented being given it. Like the boy named Sue in the Johnny Cash song, sometimes—years later—I wished my father ill for saddling me with such an awful name, even if there were very few who actually teased me for it. It was the fact that it had belonged to my sister before me that only served to make me feel like a replacement. I was not the first-born I had grown up believing I was until that point, a blessing bestowed on our family and born out of love: I was just a re-do. As if I had been conceived and birthed in order to carry on the burden of my late sister's soul in addition to my own. As if she had found a way to escape and left me behind to be her scapegoat.

At my young age, I didn't know what it was she would want to escape, or how an unborn fetus could even think in such terms. But I knew even as a young boy, felt it in my bones, even if I couldn't say why, that to be born into the Kurosaki household was a kind of prison in and of itself.

The name turned out to be eerily appropriate for me, and to an uncanny extent to our family, as well. There was a secret in our household so well kept, even I didn't know the first thing about it. Except that it was there. As a child, I was often confused by the talk of the adults around me who spoke in hushed, anxious voices of heritage and family obligation, as if afraid God might overhear. But as I said, I kept my head down. I suppose the village I grew up in must have had some strange customs in the eyes of other people, but I came to understand that every region has its own local deities and festivals, and did not bother to think that our stories of an evil god slain by a wandering hero were anything particularly unique. We weren't even the only village to have that story.

As I stared at my name in the records, I thought about what it might mean, and wondered if my sister had been the secret referred to, the secret my parents had kept alive in me so well for thirteen years. I wondered how many of the others listed on that tree spoke of cases similar to mine. How many of those gender-less names referred to aunts and great-aunts that hadn't fared as well as the men in my family? I always knew we were ultra-traditional in many ways, but what was it about being a Kurosaki that was so toxic to the women in our family?

One way or another, though, I was the last name on the tree. I couldn't say whether I was relieved or sad for my parents to see they had had no other children after me. It hadn't been any fault of mine, but I couldn't help a twinge of filial guilt that the line might have died with me. Not even my uncle had any children to save it. I couldn't help feeling that if I hadn't gone out that night, if Muraki hadn't found me, there might still be hope for another generation of Kurosakis. But not anymore. . . .

I set the matter aside for the time being, and kept digging. I couldn't afford to dwell on the things I already knew when there was so much left to be discovered.

There were a few photographs. Our family, though we kept to ourselves, had been fixtures in the community for centuries, the glue that held the village together, and that status required occasional official appearances. Especially at the local festivals, whose plays always culminated in the story of our village's founding.

It was during those last chaotic years before the Tokugawa era. A samurai by the name of Kurosaki no Ren was passing through the village when he was warned of a snake god, a yato-no-kami, who had cursed the well. The villagers begged him to dispatch the god, which he did after a fierce confrontation, but not before the yato-no-kami cursed his descendants for the unpardonable sin of killing a god.

I had heard the story every year, but I never it much serious thought. Every small village that survived the Westernization of the modern era had some dark tale up its sleeve, some ghost story or another to bring in the tourists and protect just enough of the locals' quiet way of life. Gods were part of the old ways. We might still hold festivals in their honor, build temples for veneration, but no one actually _believed_ in them anymore.

At least, that's what I'd thought before becoming a shinigami. Being confronted by devils and demons has a way of changing one's opinions about those kinds of things. For that matter, so does being a shinigami.

But reading that story now, in the empty library in the middle of the night, no longer an ignorant child but a veteran of the supernatural, I felt something stir within me.

Something primal. Something cold. Like a slithering in dark, deep water.

A chill went up my spine, and I shut the book with a clap, as if that could banish the specter of . . . whatever it was that seemed to loom over me. In an instant, I was back among the dark wooden shelves full of musty records, pressing around me like the walls of a warm, safe cocoon.

But I had to resist the urge to run. I could have transported myself back to Enma-cho in an instant if I wanted to—all it would take was a thought—but I wouldn't.

I wouldn't give in to an irrational urge that came from I didn't even know where. For one, I was supposed to be on vacation. I had to keep up appearances. If I came running back from Kamakura, everyone would know where I went, and they would know why. There was only one possible reason someone like me would go back to some place like that.

More than that, though, I had no other reason for running but a nameless fear. Something about the old legend had spooked me like a gullible kid at his first school sleepover. And just like some lame story about dead students and haunted stairways, there was nothing in that old legend that could hurt me. The snake god had been destroyed long ago, if there ever was one to begin with. If there really was a curse on my family, it couldn't be any worse than what I already suffered when I was alive.

Besides, I still needed answers before I could go home again. I felt there was still something my father and uncle had been hiding, and whatever it was, I wasn't going to find the answer anywhere in the village records.

Back in my hotel room, I thought about it long and hard, and there was only one place I could think of to go.

* * *

“Yo, Bon!” I got when Watari answered his phone. “How're the leaves in Hakone?”

I knew he wouldn't like my answer, but it had to be said.

“I'm not in Hakone, Watari. I'm in Kamakura.”

It only took a heartbeat for Watari to catch on. I could hear him sober when he said, “Right.”

* * *

“Rule number one of being dead,” he said: “You can never go home. What the blazes got into your head to make you think you were the exception to that rule?”

It wasn't often Watari got seriously upset over anything, and having him upset with me was a completely new and surprisingly unpleasant experience. Maybe because he always seemed so happy all the time. I was just glad he wasn't there in person and I didn't have to feel the full brunt of his disappointment by looking at him.

“It's a free country,” I said. “They can't stop me from going where I want.”

“No, but you still gotta take responsibility for your actions. The rules exist for a reason, Bon. You do understand why you were told expressly not to do this kinda thing, don't you?”

I did understand. I knew the rules, why they existed. I also knew that if I was careful, no one had to know the difference. The rule that forbade a shinigami to go home was there to protect the living—to protect the system that said when the dead died, they were gone. For all intents and purposes. They didn't come back to continue their afterlives alongside the living. They didn't whisper in anyone's ear what happened on the other side. Death remained a one-way street, for their benefit as much as ours.

But I never planned on being seen. I was careful. For that matter, I knew of one former traffic officer in Okinawa who disobeyed that rule on a daily basis. But none of this I told Watari.

“I'm sorry,” I said, even though I wasn't really. Sorry he was disappointed in me, more like. “But I don't remember very much about my family. Since coming to Meifu, all I remember pertains to my death. For that matter, I don't think I ever knew very much at all where the Kurosaki clan was concerned.”

I was too young to remember the histories I was taught—or at least too young to make sense of them when they were told to me. And by the time I was of an age to really get it, my folks wanted next to nothing to do with me.

“Look,” Watari said. “I know how it feels, Bon. I really do. All I remember from my own life are bits and pieces—working in my lab, swimming in the pool—thinking it would work for me like it did for Archimedes, that I'd have my own big, eureka moment, but all I really got from it was this crazy hair. Sometimes I wonder if I really lived any of it at all, or if it was all just some crazy dream someone planted in my head, and I'd really been in Meifu all along. Like the Gushoushin.”

I felt for him as he told me that. I knew the feeling. Every shinigami wakes up with it from time to time. Sometimes life here—or rather, our semblance of it—can feel more real than the lives we did live, even to the point where our histories seem like dreams to us, vivid yet just barely remembered.

However. . . .

“Maybe that's how it is for you, Watari, but this is different. I have a family that's still living. I remember that much. Or, at least, I _had_ one. . . .”

“How much do you know about them?”

He was asking so he might know how much he didn't need to fill me in on; but I got the impression he was also asking to get some idea of how much he could safely leave out, without me catching on.

“Just what I've been able to learn from public records. My family tree, records on the property. Local legend, but you have to take that with a grain of salt.

“I had a sister. I remember that much. She had the same name as me—I mean, I was given her name when I was born, but she died before I ever had a chance to meet her. It's her birth that's in the official records, but they make no mention of her death. Just like they make no mention of me being born. It's like they just decided to consider us one person.”

“Or they wanted to pretend she never existed.”

Watari's tone caught my attention. It made him start as well, as though the words had slipped out of him of their own accord. He seemed surprised he'd said it. “I didn't mean that, Bon. I didn't mean to suggest anything about your folks. That is, I don't wanna presume to know what they were thinking—”

I could all but hear his blush, knowing he was only digging himself deeper into a hole, but for some reason it made me smile. “That's okay, Watari. I think I get what you're saying.”

“You do?” His sigh of relief rattled in the phone's receiver. “Thank goodness you're a mindreader! Otherwise, I'd be putting my foot in my mouth. _Again._ ”

I didn't bother correcting him. My empathy never worked over the phone, but I guess in some ways, with all my experience getting behind-the-scenes looks into people's hearts, I'd learned a little something about reading voices and facial expressions as well.

And knowing how he'd react on the other end, I dreaded what I had to say next.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Sure, anything.”

“I'm not sure it's as easy as you think. It's kind of a big favor. I'm not even really sure what I'm expecting to find, I usually don't do stuff like this—”

“Bon, you alright? Has something happened?”

“Are you alone right now?” I didn't want anyone to overhear even a little of what I had to say.

“Yeah. Why? You gonna tell me what this is about?”

I took a deep breath, and jumped right in.

“I need to know what you and Tatsumi uncovered in Kamakura. Concerning my family. I know that information is probably classified, and something tells me I probably don't want to know all the details. But I _have_ to, Watari. I have to know what went on in that house, what my parents never told me. Even if what you have to tell me is unpleasant, even if you don't think I can handle it . . . I can. Really. I have to know. I have to know what I am.”

A waver nudged its way into my voice, making me swallow involuntarily when I said the last part. I didn't care. I'd said what I thought was necessary, all of it the truth. I was terrified of my family's secrets, but I didn't feel like I could keep living in the dark. That was even more terrifying to me, the thought that I might never know.

And wasn't that only natural?

For a long moment, there was only silence on the other end. I even feared he had hung up. But somehow, something I said must have gotten through to him. He didn't give me any spiel about the curiosity killing the cat or letting sleeping dogs lie. He didn't give me the big speech about how much trouble he could get in for giving me that information. Maybe he thought—correctly—that I had already been through all those arguments a hundred times over in my own head.

He just said, “I'll see what I can do. One way or another, I'll have an answer for you soon.”

It felt like I'd been holding my breath forever when I let it out. “Thanks, Watari—”

“Oh, Bon, just one thing, okay? Don't tell Tatsumi we talked about this?”

I smiled, feeling sheepish. “Actually, I was going to ask you the same thing.”


	3. Chapter 3

He called me back the next day saying we should meet. It took me aback how quickly he responded, thinking it might be a couple days yet before I heard anything from him. But I should have known Watari well enough by then to know that when he set his mind to something, he didn't rest until he'd seen it through to the end.

Maybe I just hadn't thought he'd set his mind to something that had to do with me.

We made arrangements to meet at a cafe near where I was staying in Kamakura, and Watari arrived a few minutes late with a manila office mail envelope under his arm. Used to Tsuzuki-time as I was, I thought he was early until I checked my watch.

“There's some nasty stuff in there, Bon,” he said. He had hands folded over the envelope in front of him, as if reluctant to push it my way. “I think you oughtta know that right off.”

“You think I might change my mind?”

It wasn't a challenge on my part. Not that time. I wasn't having second thoughts, not exactly—I knew I wanted to do this—but I couldn't help being anxious about what I might discover. Once I actually had the files in my hands.

Watari considered that a second—it felt like he was considering our whole professional career together—then he said, with absolutely certainty, “No. I don't think you will. But I feel like someone should warn you, goin' in. You've seen a lot of dark shit with us, Bon. I'm not gonna sugar-coat it for you: This isn't gonna be easy.”

“I understand.” And I did appreciate his concern. I did. “But I'm ready for it. I have to see what's in that file, Watari. I've come this far. There's no going back for me now.”

That's what he was afraid of, his resigned sigh seemed to say. But he didn't argue.

“It's my father, isn't it? He did something—”

“Your father?” Watari blinked. “No. Not per se. But—Bon, you _hafta_ know by now, your family's got secrets—”

“That go back to the founding of the line. Right? The yato-no-kami.”

“You know the story 'bout them, don't ya? Old gods—as old as the Japanese islands themselves. Rose up outta the sea along with them, I suppose. Here long before any humans, in any case. And they were a nasty bunch, even as far as kami go. Vengeful. Poison in their veins. It was said one of 'em just had to look at ya and he could wipe out your entire family line.

“Then Man came, had himself some wars, and for a period there of about a hundred years, the yato-no-kami were systematically wiped out of the northeast to make way for farmland. A lot of the old, ancient gods were. The human population was exploding, the islands got civilized, and the kami went by the wayside, either destroyed or hidden underground. Your great-great-grandaddy's particular demon looks to've been one of the last holdouts.”

“But how do you even destroy a god?”

“That's just the thing, isn't it? Sure, there's legends about magic swords and whatnot, but even those only go so far. Some say you can only destroy their vessel but not their nature, that some of the kami's power still lingers in the local surroundings, like microbes in the soil. All the more reason to even try to slay one is about the most dire sin a person can commit.”

“And reason enough for his descendants to be cursed for all time.”

I'd rarely seen Watari look as grave as he did then. As an empath, I was more used to feeling for others than to feeling their pity for me.

“D'you want me to stay with you while you look these over?” he asked me.

He pushed the folder to the center of the table, where it rested between us and the drinks we had barely touched. Now that the file was literally out of his hands, he seemed eager to get rid of what was inside, and let someone else deal with it.

His expression behind his glasses was a little harder to read. You would think someone as gregarious as Watari would wear his heart on his sleeve, but I always had a hard time reading his emotions. (I don't know if the glasses have anything to do with that, or just the clutter inside. From my experience, it seems Watari keeps his mind a lot like he keeps his office: He knows exactly where everything is, but to everyone else it just looks like a royal mess.) He smiled as he offered to stay with me, but the fragile, gentle smile on his lips didn't quite match the one in his eyes, and even then I had no idea if either of them was genuine.

“No,” I said. I'd made up my mind before he arrived. “I need to face this by myself.”

Honestly, the idea of going back to my hotel room to be alone with the file filled me with so much dread I could hardly keep my hand from shaking as I raised my cup to my lips. But I didn't want anyone else there when I read it. Maybe it's narcissistic of me, but on one level I was afraid of embarrassing myself. I never liked to be seen as vulnerable. That went triple after what happened with Muraki. Tsuzuki knew how to deal with me when I got like that, but I didn't trust nor wish that kind of trouble on anyone else. And Tsuzuki was the last person I wanted knowing what was in that file.

No, I'd made a decision when I called Watari for help that I needed to be strong. This matter concerned no one but myself. And just like no one could make me overcome my fears about Muraki but myself, no amount of onlookers was going to help me understand my family's history better than I could.

None of which made facing it any easier, of course.

Although, “If it's demons and gods and monsters . . . I've seen a lot worse than that in this job. I think I'll be able to handle it.”

Watari looked like he wanted to say something to that regard, but he changed his mind. “Alright, Bon. But if you need someone to talk to about it when you're done, don't hesitate to gimme a call, okay? Remember, there's nothin' in there I haven't already seen. And you know you can count on my discretion on this matter, right?”

He fixed me with such an intense stare over the frames of his glasses that nothing I said felt like it would sufficiently get across how deeply I was in his debt. I had to settle for a simple, “Thank you, Watari. I . . . I really can't tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“It's no big deal!” he said automatically, breaking into a grin. Then: “Well, actually it is a rather big deal. Whatever happens, you didn't get that file from me, capisce?”

I almost could have laughed. The whole thing suddenly felt like a bad spy movie.

The mood passed quickly, though. “I owe you one.”

“Now, it's too early to start talkin' 'bout oweing me anything. You might not like what that file's got to say. You might hate me for caving in and letting you have it when I really should know better.”

“Not at all. In this case, knowing is definitely better than not knowing.” And I was going to tell myself that no matter what happened next, and no matter how long Watari stared at me like that.

He knew better than to argue with me, especially on a matter like this. I don't know anything about his own life—or death, for that matter—but I knew it was none of my business. He probably felt the same way about me. Unfortunately, though, knowledge is a tricky thing in that, once you have it, it's almost impossible to take back again.

“Just be careful, Bon,” he said, then flashed another smile. “Don't do nothin' I wouldn't do.”

* * *

For all that I had been eager to get my hands on my own family's file, when I got back to my room with it, I couldn't seem to make myself open it. It sat on the coffee table where I put it down, and stared at me. If a manila envelope can ever be said to stare.

As easily as I had dismissed Watari's concerns in the cafe, now that I was alone with that information, I had no one to fall back on. No sounding board to bounce my brave words and denials off of.

I had no one to tell me it was OK, this was no big deal, I would get through this fine. No one but myself.

The fact that I even needed outside help getting information about my own family seemed ridiculous. But for some reason, it seems the longer I'm dead, the less I can remember of my life. Time works against you where memory is concerned, when all of a sudden you have all the time in the world. I don't know if it's the environment here in Meifu that edges those memories out with its gentle eternity, the unchangingness of our bodies, or something that Enma put in place when I got assigned this job, like a computer chip blocking the proper connections from being made in whatever survived of my mind.

Then again, maybe it was that night with Muraki that did it, cleaving what was me cleanly and brutally in two, preserving my younger self like an amoeba under the glass of a microscope slide, and changing the me that moved on from it so much that sometimes everything that came before it no longer seems . . . well, relevant to who I am. God knows the kind of trauma I've seen is more than enough for any one life.

But I wonder as a look back how I ever lived as I did, in the ignorance I did. I wonder how I ever got by day-to-day as a child without learning anything of my parents, if I just walked around with my head down and my hands over my ears so I never had to see or hear what was going on around me. It must have been intentional on the part of my younger self, like the imaginary friends I remember having invented to stave off my loneliness. The tactic worked so well they were more vivid to me than my actual childhood in that house, and that village, and I'm left with hardly any concrete memories of that time, aside from those few I've already mentioned. And even those are hazy, impressionistic, reduced to their basic feelings. Lights and sounds and colors.

Sometimes I wonder if my childhood would have been better had I never known my father, instead of watching him push me away over the years, and lock his heart to me. Unlike my mother, who only despised me after my secret slipped out, after I'd become a monster in her eyes, I don't think there was ever a time when father loved me. What did I do so wrong, what about me turned out so wrong that, even from the beginning, he could not care for me as a father should care for a son?

That question plagued me for a long time, even beyond the constraints of life and obligation, kept me up some nights when sleep was a worse alternative, and weighed me down with immeasurable guilt in the daytime.

Tsuzuki's guilt.

Tatsumi's, and the chief's. Hijiri's and Maria's, Tsubaki's and Chizuru's. Kurikara's. . . .

The guilt of every single person from every single case I've worked since becoming a shinigami. This “gift” of mine that is the bane of my existence—it's made me a sponge, gathering up pieces of every soul I encounter. Their pain echoes inside me, even if I can never quite know the reason for it. I feel that it's there, even if I don't know why, even if I don't know why _I_ was the one chosen to bear that burden, why _I_ was cursed with it.

As I reexamined my short life in that hotel room, I could find no sins of mine worthy of that kind of punishment. None that were in my power to control, that is, none that I was not already born with. I may not have been pious enough, but I was as devoted as I could be to what I was given in return. I may have hurt some people gravely when I revealed my empathic ability, but I never intended any harm. Nor was that even the beginning of my troubles. More like the proverbial straw on the camel's back.

And yet, I am guilty. Beneath the weight of all those other souls, there is something in me that cries out in shame. Something that resonates with all those others' pain. Something buried so deep within me, even I don't know what it is.

Have I been held accountable all this time for something I did early in my childhood, some terrible, unforgivable crime I have no recollection of? Or was it something that happened before I was born? Because how can a child be responsible for something it was not alive to do? _Why_ should a child be held responsible for that?

Those were questions I had no way of answering. But the envelope on the table possibly did.

I don't know how much time I wasted that afternoon pacing my hotel room, or just sitting in the corner of it, staring at that envelope. Finally, I pushed myself up and went to it. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, or jumping off a cliff, I couldn't think about it, about what was going to happen next. All I could do was will my body over the edge, and let my mind sit back and just enjoy freefall. After all, I had come too far to back out. Now that I had the missing piece to the puzzle that was my childhood, I couldn't _not_ read it.

I unwound the string—my hands shaking so bad I nearly tore it off—and opened the envelope. I gently removed the papers, even though they were just photocopies and printouts that Watari had made, and set them on the table. I sat myself down as I had a hundred times in front of my middle school math book, or my computer screen in the Summons Division office, when I wasn't sure how to start a report. And I prepared myself for a story about demonic infestation.

I didn't think any human story could be worse than that.

I was wrong.

* * *

The envelope contained both Watari's and Tatsumi's reports. According to the date stamp, they had been called to investigate my family while I'd been in Gensoukai that first time with Tsuzuki.

The initial problem was with my mother. She'd been ill for some time and it had finally raised a big enough red flag in our system for Summons to take action. The issue: a pregnancy that had already lasted two years and left her in a semi-vegetative state.

Not unlike the prison I'd spent the last few years of my life in, I thought: a prison of the body as well as the mind. I knew what special kind of hell that could be. But _I_ hadn't had another life growing inside me. I felt ill as I read the details. Of course, cases like hers weren't unheard of in medical history, and I'd read stories about women who had had pregnancies lasting decades. The fetuses were calcified. Like tumors that were neither alive nor dead, but just refused to go. But it was something a child should never have to imagine his own mother suffering. Guilt flared up inside me all over again, only this time I knew the reason.

I was their only child. If I hadn't gone and got myself killed, they might not have tried to have another son. If I had still been there, none of that would have had to happen.

 _I_ had brought that on my parents.

No, I corrected myself. _Muraki_ did it. It was because of _him_ , and _his_ decisions—no fault of my own. But even that was cold comfort. The reason for mother's doomed pregnancy was directly tied to my own fate. I understood why Watari had been so hesitant for me to know. He knew I'd be horrified to learn what had happened in my absence— _because_ of my absence—and that I'd blame myself.

But there was more. The doctor who had been treating my parents had died mysteriously—hence my coworkers masquerading as her replacements in order to get close to the family—and the records she'd kept on them had disappeared.

 _Treating my parents. Records on them._ Plural. I was confused. Father was undergoing treatment as well? But for what?

I scanned ahead. Something about a skin condition, his vision and stamina affected. Possibly genetic. . . .

Then something caught my eye.

Mother hadn't been catatonic the entire time Watari was there. According to his report, when she was lucid, she would see things that caused her to scream hysterically. Father passed them off as hallucinations, said her condition made her delusional, but Tatsumi didn't seem so sure. Something about father's explanation gave him cause for suspicion.

He said mother was convinced she was haunted by a ghost that was trying to kill her. The ghost of her dead sister.

* * *

Since as far back as I can remember, I've known about my sister.

It was one of my earliest memories. Being taken behind the house as a young boy to a gravestone that had my name on it. Something like that should scar a kid for life, but father had explained to me before I could even think about my own mortality that it was my older sister buried there, an older sister who had died before I was even born.

Stillborn, I learned later. It couldn't be helped. So my parents counted themselves blessed when I came along. A healthy, living boy. They gave me her name to honor her memory, to keep her close by even though they'd never really had a chance to know her.

I never really analyzed it when I was a child, but even from an early age I felt a close presence. Living in that old house, playing in that field, even when I was alone I never truly felt alone. It always seemed as though someone or something was watching me, itching to come over to me, always staying just out of reach. Not exactly benign, but not really sinister either. Just . . . curious. I'd had no way to explain it, so I let my imagination run wild.

I had a particularly vivid imagination, too. I couldn't always tell if my playmates were kids from the village or friends I had imagined to life. Maybe it was a combination of both. Sometimes they sang old songs that my friends later denied knowing, when we were safe inside the old school house and under the protective eye of our teacher. Sometimes they seemed to know things about me that I never told them in class.

As a child, you never really give those kinds of things much thought. Your dreams are more vivid, and, as you age, what was real to you then starts to seem like a dream.

But now, reading what was written in that file, I started to wonder.

Wonder if that presence I had felt all my life had been a trace of my sister, a bit of her soul hanging around, watching me. Wonder if I didn't know, even if just a little, how mother felt.

Only, to my knowledge, I had never felt in mortal peril from my own shade.

* * *

Moreover, I never had an aunt. Other than Uncle Iwao's wife, that is, and as far as I knew, she was still alive. Divorced from my uncle almost as soon as the dinner party that autumn night in '93 was over—and no one would say it wasn't for the better—but even if something had happened to her since then, she'd never shown any indication in the time I'd known her of hating my parents enough to want to spend her afterlife haunting them.

So it came as a shock to read that my mother had had a twin. An identical twin at that.

I stared at the photo and couldn't believe it. It must have been a trick, I thought. Someone had taken mother's picture—snapped at a festival of some sort when she was younger—and simply mirrored it. Edited it. It couldn't be real.

If it was, then why had I never been told about my aunt, who the file said had been named Kasane? That was something a child should know, wasn't it? That his own mother had an identical twin?

The answer lay right in front of me, too shameful to have to read on paper. But, with no other option, I read on anyway.

She had committed suicide. Drowned herself in the lake behind our house—the lake everyone called Kasane Pond, which I'd always just assumed was after the old ghost story. The same lake my mother would always tell me not to go near, for one reason or another. It varied by the hour. Because it was dangerous and I didn't know how to swim. Because snakes lived in that pond, and mosquitoes. Because it was haunted.

But never because her own sister, her sibling so close to her they shared the same face, the same DNA, had killed herself in it. Not because her own kin had committed an act so shameful there, she could never bring herself to speak of it.

But it wasn't just my aunt Kasane who had shamed herself.

It was my father as well, for pretending as though she had never been his legal wife. It was my mother, for marrying father before her sister was even cold in her grave. Both of them, for carrying on as though she had never existed.

And as though she had never given father a child.

Because the story he told me at that gravesite had been only half complete, if that. I really did have an older sister, but she had been my half-sister, the daughter of an aunt who died before I was born. Another woman, who could have been _my_ mother, if things had worked out differently.

And her child hadn't been stillborn, either. That was one area where the official history and Tatsumi's report varied wildly. My sister Hisoka hadn't just taken a breath or two outside the womb, she'd lived for days. Weeks, even. A healthy baby girl, with no defects to speak of.

That had been her only sin. If Tatsumi's story could be believed—and I had to believe it, even if I found it abominable to do so; what other option did I have?—it was Uncle Iwao who had killed her.

He had no choice, he'd said. It was for the family. For the good of the clan. If father was too weak of character, if he lacked the resolve to do it himself, then he, Iwao, would. As the oldest son. The son who should have been my grandfather's heir. So he waited until an evening when her parents had gone into town and left my sister with the maids, and . . .

He murdered her. A helpless, sinless baby, and he snuffed the life from her. Just like that.

It was no wonder Aunt Kasane took her own life after that. It was from grief, plain and simple. A mother's grief. Grief that was only compounded by father's unwillingness to bring my uncle to justice for his crime. For that matter, maybe he'd been complicit in it. As far as the local police were concerned, my father never put a foot wrong. And maybe that was just uncle's bribes doing the talking, but I had no way of knowing it wasn't. I always knew my family was traditionalist. Patriarchal, sometimes to the extreme. The first-born child inherited the household and all its long history, all its obligations. Uncle Iwao never let any of us forget that, never let us forget the slight of grandfather's decision when he'd deviated from that tradition for perhaps the first time since its founding.

But more importantly, only a son could be heir.

They had done it together. They must have. I was sure of it. Father wasted no time trying for another child after my sister was out of the way. A proper child, a son who, with no living child before him, could pass as first-born, without even changing the records. Surely that was proof enough of his guilt. And when Kasane wouldn't do it for him, when she chose death over giving him another child, he married her sister. Her exact duplicate, in all but scruples. He did his part that night, getting his wife out of the house so his brother could come in and do the dirty work. And my uncle . . .  


I'd always known. I'd felt it, even at a young age, what a monster he was. The way he looked at me, kept his distance from me. . . . I'd felt it at that dinner party. His conscience had confessed it to me, albeit in no specific detail.

He was a killer. I'd known that much with certainty. He was a killer who had felt no remorse for his crime. No joy, either, but a satisfaction just the same, knowing he had done something righteous. Something justified. He had committed the ultimate act of filial piety, and, no matter what else, he was proud of that fact.

God. . . . It must have been _him_ who urged mother to kill me when I was thirteen!

He must have understood the nature of my ability. He must have figured it out that night, figured it was just a matter of time before I started spilling his secrets as well. My curse was a sword hanging over his head, so long as he knew there was a chance I could tell mother what he had done to her sister's daughter. And consequently to her sister.

Maybe he'd been planning a way of getting rid of me all along, all thirteen years of my existence. After all, I was the main obstacle between him and his inheritance. Maybe I only escaped my prison that night because he _wanted_ me to escape. He was a very influential man in our community. Maybe _he_ had sent Muraki—

No.

I stopped myself. That was a train of thought that could lead to some _very_ dark places, if I let it. But as it stood, I had no proof that my uncle had anything to do with Muraki being on the grounds that night. If he had, I should have at least felt something to that regard from Muraki himself. He hadn't exactly held anything back the night I met him. For all I still knew, our meeting was random. Pure chance, and extreme misfortune on my end.

Until something told me otherwise, I had to go on believing that. Otherwise, who knew where the path of speculation might lead. I had come to Kamakura to find answers, and so far they had only given me proof of more deceptions than I could have dreamed of.

But the answers were what would save me. That was what I believed when I made the leap and contacted Watari.

And that was what I believed as I held his and Tatsumi's report in my hand. So far, it hadn't been easy. I'd never thought it would be. But somewhere there would be an end to this tunnel, even if it got a lot darker inside before I could get there.

* * *

Darkness was something I was used to. I wandered in it my whole life, and so far my death has been no exception. In fact, it's made my first sixteen years look like a walk in the park.

I've faced monsters of one form or another that could have killed me. Some of them even succeeded. I've died more times than I care to remember—and not only at Muraki's hand, though that night, and the three-year-long ordeal that followed it, was certainly the worst. After that, dying can only get easier. After that, being nearly cut in half by your own devil-possessed partner—while no less excruciating physically—has to be put in perspective.

My shinigami body can mend just about any injury done to it, however fatal it may be, save for that caused by a god, like one of Tsuzuki's Twelve. But even that—or so I've come to understand—would be a relatively blissful way to slip into eternal sleep, compared to what that man put me through.

I was barely even dead and my first case involved my own murderer. A trial by fire if ever there was one. For just a short while, I was able to exist in ignorance of what precisely had happened to me, and in my ignorance I thought that the most important thing in the world was finding out what that was, and what or who was responsible for my death. I wasn't content with the “mysterious terminal illness” story. I knew somehow that it wasn't right. I needed something concrete to hold on to, something tangible to blame, and I thought the not-knowing was a sort of hell in and of itself.

But then Muraki made me remember . . . everything. Every excruciating detail of what he did to me. Every touch, every movement. . . .

Every minute etching of the curse he wrote into me.

What I wanted to forget most of all was what he was feeling all the while. The pain I can deal with—I can cling on to it as the reason I want revenge, the bastard who inflicted it the very example of the kind of person I never want to become. A standard of measurement for every future injury, so I can say: Well, I have felt worse.

But nothing drags me so low as the memory of what was going through his mind when he raped me in that grove, on my own family's property:

It was my fault.

I brought it on myself, being there that night. I had witnessed him murdering a woman, and he had to make sure I stayed silent on the matter.

Just my being there was temptation enough. And I didn't run away at first, like any normal person would have done. I didn't scream. I looked at him with an expression that . . . in retrospect, must have been shock and horror, but to his mind at the time, his mind already clouded by the thrill of bloodshed, he believed I looked like I was asking for it. Can you believe that? That anyone would actually _ask_ to be violated like I was? It was the same line he always used, whether it was in his thoughts that first night, or later, when I met him again after my death, a humiliation to constantly rub my nose in at every turn:

 _I_ had seduced _him_.

Me. A thirteen-year-old boy whose only desire that night had been to sneak out of his prison for a few hours of fresh air. What could I possibly know of seduction? What could I possibly want from a man—no, a _monster_ like him? It was ludicrous to even entertain the idea.

And yet he believed it. He believed it so strongly, I had no choice but to feel it in my bones. My curse of empathy left me no other option. The strength of conviction behind his words, the fondness of the memories of that night in his own mind, the _beauty_ of it, seeped into me like blood into tree roots, making what hazy, nightmarish impressions remained blossom into grotesquely vivid colors and shapes, scents and sensations. The pain of that night was etched deep inside me, in every possible way.

And yet there is this overlay, this second layer of truth that I can't deny, I can't get out of my head: the sensuality of it all for him, the poetic imagery, the wonderful tragedy of it every time I tried to scream out my agony but couldn't find the breath. Every time I struggled underneath him, shuddered for him, bled for him. . . .

He enjoyed every second of my prolonged death, relished it like it was a gift I'd given to him. Like it was something, somewhere deep down inside me, I wanted as much as he did. Even through the fog of pain, I was not entirely immune to pleasure. And he wanted to make sure I knew, I'd enjoyed at least some of the things he did to me. I'd enjoyed them very much. . . .

Now I'm not sure if he only said those things to torment me. When I met him again, it was hatred I felt, his as well as mine. I'm not sure he ever expected me to come back to haunt him from beyond the grave. Well, I suppose I've done more thwarting than haunting; I've interfered with his plans at every turn, and that's the problem.

So he devised the best way he could of hurting me. I'm sure that's what it was. Not only did he awaken those memories that my becoming a shinigami had locked safely away, he gave me a reason to despise myself for them. A reason to doubt the kind of person that I was, and everything I thought I wanted.

There was one thing I wanted, though, that I did not doubt, and that was justice.

No. If I'm honest, what I wanted—what I still want—is revenge. There could be no justice for what happened to me that night, what he did to me. There's no going back in time, no undoing what was done.

But I can still make him pay. I can make him suffer.

If he isn't already dead, that is. And if he was, I know I would feel it. Like a snapped tension line, I would feel the slackness, the relief of not being tied to him anymore. Of not being pulled by him, by the curses that still crisscross my body. But the line has only been relaxed a little bit; I can't fool myself that it's gone altogether. So long as my curse remains, there will still be that connection between us, the connection made that night under the lunar eclipse, repeating like a looped track every time the lines under my skin start to itch again.

So long as he exists, I still have a chance. I can still see him suffer. I can still give him back everything he gave to me in spades.

And if it makes me as bad as he is . . . I doubt that's possible, but so be it. That's a small price to pay.

Because when I'm done, I'll finally be free.

* * *

Now, as I sat in my hotel room in Kamakura with my family's secrets laid out before me, I had to wonder if that violent urge screaming within me really did come from what Muraki did, some transference from his psyche to mine, or if it was something that existed as a potential in my DNA all along. If my own father and his brother had had it in them to kill—and destroy something harmless and defenseless, at that—why should I be any different?

In a way, I don't have a choice. Taking life goes hand-in-hand with this job, though that isn't to say it's ever easy. Not when you're an empath. Still, I was able to treat this job as just that from the start: a job. Nothing personal. So long as it simply meant taking souls. Peacefully ending lives myself that should have ended in more natural ways.

Until Tsubaki.

It was a long time before I no longer felt the gun in my hand—the kick and the heat of it after it fired. Even long after I'd washed my hands clean a dozen times, I still felt her blood on them.

She asked me to do it, I told myself. She would have died anyway. She knew that and she didn't want to suffer any more than she had to. She'd already suffered enough—and at the hands of Muraki, no less. In that way, we were like brother and sister, she and I, freaks born of the same evil mind. She'd just been shot by someone she trusted who had betrayed her; what was one more, if he could end it once and for all?

I should never have agreed. As a shinigami, I had other options in my arsenal. But none of them came to mind in that ship's hold, with her staring at me with those childlike eyes, begging me, through lips that had kissed mine, to pull the trigger. I wonder sometimes if she was begging just as much for herself, trying with everything she had left to convince herself that that was for the best, because I'm not sure even she believed it was. I'm not sure either of us truly believed that was mercy.

And I wonder sometimes if she really understood she'd be making a killer out of me, no different from him, even if my reasons were. Murder is murder, even if only with the best intentions.

Tsuzuki knew that. It flitted through the back of his mind even as he comforted me, told me everything would be alright, just let it out, that he knew what I was going through. Way back in the corner of his thoughts there must have been a doubt, a sense that there must have been something else I could have done. It didn't have to end that way. I didn't have to bloody my hands. I should have done my job better.

I wondered if that's how father felt when his first-born child was murdered. Did he justify it, saying it was for the best for everyone? Was he relieved that my uncle had done the deed for him, so he hadn't had to sully his own hands with the sin of infanticide?

It didn't matter. She was just a baby, only weeks old. What kind of monster destroys a life that innocent—his own flesh and blood? Because I couldn't find any justification for it. None whatsoever. Family obligation, tradition—those concepts were like ashes in my mind, all burnt up and useless to me. As dead as I was. Where had that obligation been to my sister? Where had it been to me? Neither of us ever asked to be born, let alone treated the way we were, in that house.

After what happened to us, should I still feel bad that they got the punishment any outsider would surely say they deserved?

* * *

If even half of that Tatsumi and Watari had reported was true—and I had no reason to doubt it was—was it any wonder Mother feared our household was damned? If not by her own sister, then maybe by her niece.

Or maybe something more sinister altogether.

As I read further, the reports grew less and less believable. If I weren't a shinigami, and if I didn't know the two who had written them, I might have passed them off as the paranoid rantings of a superstitious villager.

There was Tatsumi's story that Aunt Kasane's preserved body had attacked him while he was walking around the lake. Just up and reached out, dragged him under. . . .

The thing poisoning mother's womb, which wasn't any normal fetus. . . .

And father's mysterious “skin condition,” though Watari's report hardly suggested anything that could ordinarily be called that. Scales, it read, that made him think of ichthyosis or leprosy, but were at the same time not quite like any form of either of those. Nights father would spend in agony while the household was under strict orders not to disturb him. Weakness, and extreme sensitivity to light. My coworkers managed to convince father to let them examine his eyes, and they were like cat eyes, they said, or possibly more like a serpent's.

Snakes. Suggestions of them were everywhere, from what Tatsumi wasn't even wholly sure he witnessed at the lake, to the description of father's eyes and scales found in the house, even maids' hearsay of sounds and shapes that slithered in the night.

Maybe suggestions were all they were. Everyone in the village knew the story of the curse behind my family. That's why they held the festival every year, to give thanks for our ancestor who had saved the population from the snake god.

And to appease whatever spirit they still believed haunted the area. They claimed to love every Kurosaki, to be indebted to us—and that was how we were allowed, quite literally, to get away with murder. But behind our backs, they blamed us. They begged the gods for their own mercy, washed their hands of the great crime. And so our entire line was forever paying the debt of our first ancestor in Kamakura, who committed the ultimate sin, no matter how pure of altruistic his motives might have been at the time: the sin of killing a god.

Maybe some of the older folks in the village still believed, but I'm willing to bet most of those who still stayed didn't put much stock in that curse business. They played their part for the tourists, and went through the motions on festival day as though they believed it; but if a real demon were ever to confront them, it would shock them as much as if they'd seen an alien from another planet. Shatter their entire worldview, throw their entire system of belief out the proverbial window.

I had been like that once. If not for my empathy, I might have only grown stronger in my disbelief as I got older.

I felt like that middle-schooler again as I read the reports, knowing I must accept every word of it, yet finding it hard to. The curse was real, and it was not something that had happened to someone else, something I could treat with the indifference of a story aired on late-night TV. It was something that had come true for my family. Something I had unknowingly lived my entire life in that household with.

Something that might have happened to me, something I might have had to suffer, if I were still alive today.

If I had been father's heir, instead of taken away that night of the eclipse—everything he had sacrificed for, sinned for, so that our name and our debt could be passed on for another generation.

If not for that night, for my successfully sneaking out—if not for chancing to go the way I did, randomly running into Muraki—

* * *

I shoved the table away from me as I bolted to my feet. Some of the files slipped off the edge and fell on the floor, intermixing out of order.

I didn't care. All of a sudden, it felt as though gravity had reversed itself in my gut and I was going to be sick.

Thankfully, as soon as I stood and sucked in a breath, the feeling passed; but a chill passed through me, and the air inside my room suddenly felt oppressive and damp. I thought I might suffocate. The truth was trapped in here with me, ricochetting around the walls, around the inside of my head, so that not another thought could get in.

The possibility that maybe . . . I was better off dead.

And that the one I had to thank for that was—

No. I couldn't say it, couldn't even _think_ it. To do that repulsed me, disgusted me, made all my anger and hatred for him flare up like a bomb armed and rearing to go off, and if I just let the button be pushed—

I wouldn't think it. He _murdered me_. It's because of him that I carry around a curse of my own already, one that tortures me anew every time I'm reminded of him. One that I can never rid myself of. One I never asked for, nor did anything to even deserve, no matter what he wants me to believe. I never asked for anything like this. . . .

And yet, a quiet voice spoke up within me, not unlike the one that stopped me in the woods outside my house—and yet, aren't you happy where you are now? Aren't you grateful?

Do you really want to go back? To _that?_

But I couldn't—

I flung open the window, wishing these ridiculous thoughts would fly out, but the chilly autumn wind only rushed in. It made me shiver, though whether from cold or the excess of adrenaline, I couldn't be sure. It gave me something else to focus on for a few clear seconds, at least, and maybe that was just what I needed. A mental break.

There was an electric kettle in the room for making tea, and I plugged it in.

I picked up the papers that had fallen and pieced them back together with the others, placing each one in its correct order for when I was ready to delve into them again.

I took deep breaths as I paced the room, reviewing the story as I'd learned it so far in my head. Compartmentalizing each fact helped to distance myself from it, if only for a little while. When the water was ready, I made tea, but I didn't remember to drink it. It was already dark outside, and I still had the story's conclusion to get to.

So I settled myself back down at the coffee table, cleared my thoughts, and plunged back in.

* * *

My uncle was dead.

By a freak and gruesome accident, according to Watari's report, but it left no room for doubt that the same mysterious curse that plagued my parents was responsible.

They hadn't been able to save my mother, either.

When they first arrived at the compound, Watari had taken on the role of the new physician, Tatsumi playing his assistant; but with no real medical training to speak of between them—other than what Watari picked up in his free time, which was only really of any use to shinigami bodies—they were ill prepared to deal with a real emergency.

Believing some essence of the original yato-no-kami had survived on the grounds and was responsible for the current mess, and its escalation, they performed an exorcism. (There was something else about wormholes, but the language was so technical—frankly, with everything else on my plate, I didn't read that far into it.) As far as the reports indicated, it was successful, but partway through, mother went into labor. In the end, it wasn't Aunt Kasane who killed her, as she'd feared, but the child inside her. Or . . . whatever you want to call it.

Tatsumi was gentle. He called it a child, and reported that it was born dead and then disposed of.

But Watari's more clinical vocabulary—fetus, tumor, keratinous blob—made me feel ill all over again. It was unreal. That was my own mother they spoke of. And even if she hadn't been much of one to me in the last years of my life, she'd given me my life all the same. I'd loved her once, as I'd thought she loved me.

I felt no spite toward my coworkers for being unable to save her—they are shinigami, after all, and death is their forte, not life—only a vague and distant sense of remorse. Maybe you could call it guilt. That I wasn't there. That I was off having an adventure with Tsuzuki, trying selfishlessly to make myself more powerful, while she was suffering through that living nightmare. I missed her death completely. I didn't even know it had happened, and that she had been gone for more than a year already.

As for father, his condition had progressed to a point it was necessary to remove him from that house, and whatever influence they believed it had over him. Last they'd left him, he was in a hospital in Kamakura. Possibly the same one I'd been admitted to after Muraki was through with me, during the three years before I died I still have no recollection of, other than the faintest impression of very intense pain.

I might have passed the building on my wandering just days before. But I doubted it. Hospitals are the kinds of places I keep a wide berth of, even when I have no personal connection to them. I had no desire to revisit the one that to me represented the worst years of my life.

For that matter, I had no particular desire to see what had become of my father, either. I didn't want to see what the disease I might have inherited looked like, and I didn't want his weight added to the one I already carried around on my shoulders.

He had lost everything. I knew the feeling all too well. Why did I need to relive it in someone else? In order to relieve my own conscience?

I didn't see what being there would relieve, or that there was anything I should apologize for if I went. Other than being dead, I suppose. For robbing him of the heir he and uncle obviously worked so hard to make possible. I sure as hell wasn't going to apologize for how I turned out. My empathy might have gotten me into the trouble that finally did me in, but it was beyond the point of mattering now. Just one more tick in a long list of mistakes and embarrassments our family had suffered, that no amount of penance could undo or make right.

And now it was over. Father had failed. When he died, whenever that may be, our line would die with him.

All of the anger I had felt toward my family as I read through the reports sputtered then, confused as to where to go. I wanted to hate my parents for how they treated me, and for what they and my uncle did to my sister, even though I might never have lived if they hadn't. I wanted to believe that they all got what they deserved for their crimes in the end, just as we'd all had to pay for one distant ancestor's, but what did it matter one way or another? They were all gone now.

Only the house remained.

Empty, abandoned, all the servants sent home. Not a Kurosaki left to haunt that place, except for the souls of the dead.

And myself among them.

I had to go back. I had no choice. Now that there was nothing to keep me from returning, no one to be afraid of running into, I knew I would be going. It was just a simple matter of working up the will power.


	4. Chapter 4

The space of a few day's time had done little to change the appearance of the place.

And yet it was transformed in my eyes. Swollen out of proportion, darker in the shadows, more ancient than I ever grasped as a child wandering those halls.

I stood on the same rise before the same patch of fallow field, wondering if I now had what was necessary to go in. I was supposedly here on vacation, and had brought none of the tools I use as a shinigami. I felt naked, stripped of my powers. All but the ones I took in with me, that were a part of my soul now.

And knowledge. Maybe the most powerful weapon of all. The Tsuzuki-voice of my conscience told me that—or maybe I was just repeating it to myself like a mantra, thinking if I thought it enough times I might actually make it true.

But I could hear Watari on the other hand protesting, saying the whole reason he gave me that file was so I wouldn't have to go in myself. Rule Number One of being dead, he'd said to me, and it echoed in the chief's voice as well with every step I took.

And in Enma's. A voice I'd only heard once before, and then promptly forgotten. But my imagination was bad enough. What he wouldn't do to me if he found out what I'd uncovered about my family's past, and about my own—all the things he'd put the proper barriers in place to make sure I wouldn't remember. Did he think I would never go looking for the answers myself?

Or was it only a matter of time—was this too part of whatever plan he had made for me from the beginning?

The idea that there was something here he didn't want me to find out only made me more curious. It was just the push I needed to leave my hiding place, and walk out toward the house where I grew up.

* * *

It was like a strong sense of deja vu. Only in reverse. Places I knew I recognized, but it seemed as though they had all been important to somebody else. Not me.

The cracks in the wall, the patterns they made under my fingers like the valleys of Mars when I traced over them—a pattern I thought I must have once known so well, now felt so alien to me.

The trees and bushes in the garden, their familiar shapes overgrown and uncared for. The koi pond clogged with autumn leaves, nothing living in it now but frogs, the verandas that were swept clean every morning and afternoon black with mildew. Crickets chirping under the porch. A startled robin taking flight. Those were the only signs of habitation.

I don't know why I expected anything else. I knew the place had been abandoned after my coworkers' stay. But somehow I'd thought there would at least be servants here to hide from. The compound had always been alive and in motion when I was here. Even on the darkest days, there was a sense of life within its walls. Even as creaky and musty as it had been back then, it was well cared for, for a house of its age.

Now there was nothing. Once again, I felt I had been robbed of a right that was mine. I came here for answers, and for closure, and in the end my parents had denied me even that.

I wandered around to the back of the property. There were still two more places I had to see before I left.

But unlike the house and the cherry grove, the lake was unfamiliar territory. As a child, I had been forbidden to go there. Now I knew it was because my aunt Kasane had chosen that lake to be her tomb.

And if Tatsumi's story was true, its waters used to possess an even more sinister secret. It was the kind of place monsters rose out of.

And there I was, like a fool, heading in.

* * *

 _"Ka-go-me . . . Ka-go-me. . . .”_

I stopped in my tracks.

I knew that old song. I dreamed of it sometimes, of playing the game with the village children whose mothers weren't afraid of rumors of a curse.

Or were they just the friends I made up to keep me company because the other children hated me? I couldn't remember now. If I could, I don't know how I would be able to separate the facts of that time from fiction. But I remember I liked to play that game more than any other, even though it filled me with terror to be the bird in the cage, the “goblin,” wondering who was going to sneak up behind me to try and do me in.

To a child, it's wonderful to be afraid. You really do believe nothing can hurt you, and fear is only good for a temporary thrill you can return safely from whenever you want.

It's only as you age, as you see things you never want to see, and understand things you wish you never had to understand, that you begin to get a sense of your own mortality, and the true fragility of it. And wonder how you ever survived as long as you did.

 _“Kagome, Kagome, little bird inside the cage . . ._

 _“When, o, when will you come out? In the evening of the dawn._

 _“The turtle and the crane both slipped and fell. . . .”_

I'd thought I was imagining the song, but as I crept up to the shore of the lake, I couldn't mistake the sound any longer. It was coming from the landscape around me.

My heart beat harder. I wasn't alone after all. Someone was here with me, singing . . .

 _“Who's that sneaking up behind_ you _now?”_

It was a child, facing me over a narrow part of the lake. Barely taller than the reeds, no older than six or seven, and dressed in an old kimono. Its fair hair and complexion were like mine. Like my father's. It smiled when it saw me, though its messy hair obscured its eyes. I couldn't tell if the child was a boy or a girl, but then, they'd said the same of me when I was that age.

“Who are you?” I asked it, half expecting it would disappear when I spoke, prove itself to be just an illusion.

But the child remained. “Who are _you_?” it echoed back in its androgynous voice.

“I'm . . .” Kurosaki Hisoka, I almost said. I used to live here. “No one. A tourist.”

The child laughed. “No, you're not.”

“I got lost.”

“No. You didn't.”

How would you know, I wanted to say, but I no longer had any claim to this place. And who was I to tell off a kid for disrespecting his elder? Any other child in the village would have seen me as just another spoiled teenager from the city, and not a very impressive one at that. I wasn't the sort of person to be intimidated by.

“Why were you singing that song?” I said instead.

“What's wrong with it?” The child pouted—an expression I found even more disconcerting than its smile. “You always used to like playing 'Kagome, Kagome' with me.”

Then I recognized the kimono the child was wearing. “That's my—”

“What, this old hand-me-down? Does that mean you know who I am? Of course, why wouldn't you recognize your own sibling?”

Hope surged within me. Could it be her? I wanted to believe that. After everything I'd read about my older sister just the night before, I would have liked to believe I'd been given a second chance to talk to her, to set things right where our parents could not.

I wanted to think that she was still here, that she'd always been here, watching over me.

But I knew better.

“My sister was only weeks old when she died. You can't be her.”

When the child's smile dropped, the temperature around the lake seemed to fall with it.

“Yes,” it agreed, “yes, I suppose you're right. I can't fool you, can I? However, I never said I was she.”

The change that came over its voice chilled me. It was the voice of a young boy on the surface, but underneath was an agelessness that was out of place with that child's innocent face and body.

It raised its head, and now I could see that its eyes were a deep, golden green, like a stagnant, slime-filled pool. The whites of them had turned a putrid gray, but the irises shone enough with their own internal light that I could see the pupils were not round at all, but narrow slits. Like a cat's.

Or a serpent's.

I knew then who—or should I say, _what_ the child was just as surely as if it had told me itself. “You're that thing. . . . You're what killed mother!”

When it saw my disgust, it laughed. “I knew you'd see the family resemblance. But, after all, it is our _father_ we take after. Is it not?”

“But . . . that can't be.” It wasn't that long ago that mother died—impossible that the child could be this big in just a few years, never mind the fact that, “You should be dead.” This was at odds with everything I had read in Watari's report. He and Tatsumi had witnessed this thing's birth. “They buried you.” I knew they would have no reason to lie about something like that. “So how . . .?”

The child didn't need to respond. At least, not out loud. I caught a glimpse of an infant-like shape, curled up tight from the pain of its final throes. Hard, black, scaly skin, cracked and weeping from the seams. A face that had all the right parts, but in all the wrong proportions. An alien thing struggling to live inside a body incompatible with the world it had been born into.

Whatever it looked like now, this child had not been an ordinary fetus. Even though mother's type of condition was well documented elsewhere, there had been nothing “normal” about her particular case. Or about what she delivered. “You're not human.”

My coworkers hadn't lied. They _had_ disposed of the fetus afterwards. They just hadn't been expecting it to be what it really was.

“Yato-no-kami.”

How could they miss this?

* * *

The satisfaction in the child's grin was all the answer I needed.

“Your friends were thorough, I'll give them that. But they weren't thorough enough. They were too busy going through their sacred rites, trying to banish me in one form, they did not see the me that was hiding in plain sight, right under their noses. And who could blame them? I wasn't exactly a beautiful baby.”

A snarl tugged at my lips. “How could you do that to them? To _her_?” I wasn't sure which was more righteous, my anger for what that thing did to my parents—though I was finding it hard to love them, they were still the ones who'd given me life—or my disgust. I couldn't believe my mother would have simply allowed herself to be impregnated by a god, no matter how devoted she claimed to be to the family. Were my parents even aware of what had happened?

Or was that, too, something they just had to lie back and accept?

“If they would not do their duty and give me what I required,” the yato-no-kami said, “I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands. Your parents would not give me an heir, so I made one myself.”

“Then, you're not father's child at all.” It looked like me, but that was only a trick of the yato-no-kami's powers. It had to be. I couldn't be related to that thing. “You're not my sibling. You're not any relation of mine!”

The child laughed—a haunting chuckle that hung over the water between us like a thick mist.

“You're mistaken. When I said we took after our father, I wasn't talking about that man, Na-ga-re.”

It spoke my father's name like each syllable was a drop of water falling from its hand into the lake.

Or, rather, like it was the name of a lover. There was a fondness there, a kind of derisive lasciviousness, the same inflection I caught in Muraki's words when he talked about us “enjoying” our night together. It turned my stomach. What exactly had happened in that house after I was gone, I could not know except what my coworkers' official reports told me. But there were places even my need to know did not want to go.

“I had plans for you, Hisoka,” the yato-no-kami said in that same lilting, serpentine tone. “Lofty plans. We were going to have _great_ fun together, you and I.”

“All those centuries ago—how did you survive?” I had to know, because suddenly I knew what I had to do. Why my curiosity had led me here. “What is it you want from us?”

“Why do you want to know so badly now? You never seemed much interested in me when you were alive. What do you expect to accomplish with that knowledge, hm?”

I took a step backward. It was a natural response. All of a sudden, I felt I might not be the only one here with empathic abilities. It felt as though some cold hand was trying to reach into my soul; its fingertips were pressing at my flesh, trying to dig inside. Something was coming for me, slithering across the distance between us. I could almost see its shadow beneath the surface of the lake. . . .

“Poor shinigami.” The child cocked its head. “You're a little out of your league. Here I was looking forward to our little family reunion, and this is how you greet me?”

My eyes darted around, but the banks were choked with weeds. Too many places to hide. Where would the attack come from?

“What do you want from me?”

The child tsked. “Nothing now. What use would I have for a corpse? All I want from you is to go back to the hell you came from!”

There it was! Moving toward me at remarkable speed. Tendrils like thick roots, slick with lake mud, flying through the weeds toward me.

My shields came up around me at a thought, a twitch of muscle, and the tendrils cracked and crumbled at the point of contact, leaving nothing but the smell of wet dirt.

But I missed one. Somehow it sneaked through my defenses. It cinched tight around my ankle and yanked me off my feet before I even knew what had happened. I hit the bank hard, breath and thought temporarily knocked out of me as a jolt of pain shot up from the base of my spine.

Other roots came up out of the water to join it, twisted and strong, and they dragged me. In a moment of panic, I could see myself under the lake's surface, floundering in that brackish darkness. I could feel it filling my lungs, feel myself drowning without dying, surrounded by some massive coiled serpent that waited for me there with the cursed soul of my aunt—

I think I screamed. I saw red and tasted ozone in the back of my throat.

Or maybe it was the child who screamed, singed from the blast from my psyche. I wasted no time hanging around to find out.

My leg free, I scrambled to my feet from the cold mud of the bank, a meter or less separating me from the edge of the water. And I ran.

I ran back toward the house as fast as my legs would carry me. All the while, the yato-no-kami's rage trailed after me. He hadn't expected much of a fight. But now that he'd seen what I could do, he'd have himself a little fun before finishing me off.

Just like how we used to play together.

* * *

I cursed my lack of foresight.

I had nothing on me—no fuda, no tactile weapons, not even a shikigami that I could call on. Nothing but my wits and my own mental shields. And my empathy, whatever good that was going to do me against a being more skilled at mind-reading than I was. I'd come here expecting the only fight to be in my own soul, and if I didn't come up with something fast, I would pay for that mistake.

Scratch that. There was one other option open to me. I could run. Teleport back to Meifu. Call this whole vacation nonsense off and confess to the chief just where I'd been, plead for Enma's mercy. For a moment, I even entertained it seriously. I was in over my head here; even begging forgiveness and accepting the punishment was better than being destroyed by the same being who had destroyed my entire family.

But I couldn't. I was sick of running. That's why I'd decided to come back in the first place. To reclaim my past, and face all the darkness and pain that went with it. I couldn't run away, even if I wanted to.

But more than that, I couldn't let the yato-no-kami have its way. I had escaped its clutches, and my own destiny, once. I wasn't about to let it take me back. I had to finish it now, or it would haunt me for the rest of my existence.

I ran to where I knew my father kept the family swords. Ren's original blade, the one from the legend used to slay the yato-no-kami, had been destroyed in the battle; but our clan was an old one, and there were others passed down over the generations.

I had gone looking for those swords as a young boy. But when father caught me at it, he had them all locked up. They were too dangerous for a child to handle—or, for that matter, anyone. He abhorred any tool used for violence. It could hurt the person who wielded it just as easily as his opponent, he said. Look what good it did our ancestor. Did a blade ever save him? If anything, it was what got him into trouble, from the second it first spilled a god's blood. And it was all of us Kurosakis who'd been paying for it ever since, right on down the centuries.

But there was a reason they were still here. A sword was made to be used, and that was what I intended to do.

“Hi-so-ka, come out and pla-ay,” the yato-no-kami's childlike voice echoed outside the walls. “I've waited so long to see you again, so why must you hide from me? Come out and we'll have some fun, just like old times.”

The lock on the chest opened to me with a muffled crack. I knew I didn't have much time. Not as much time as I would have liked to test each sword's weight and balance in my hand.

I had to rely on intuition. And memory. My empathy generally only works on people, but sometimes a particularly treasured possession will carry a trace of its owner's emotional state. I wasn't sure how long such a trace would last, though.

I lucked out. As I closed my eyes, willed my mind open, and passed my hand over the swords' grips, one stood out almost immediately. It was old, its red braiding faded to a dusty pink, the bronze hand guard aged to a dark patina. But I could feel the strength of the blade inside—or at least, someone centuries ago had trusted his life to it. He'd believed in it with everything he had, and that was good enough for me.

My confidence flowed again as my palm molded to the ridges of the grip. The sword was a comforting weight in my hand when I walked out to find my opponent waiting for me. “If you want me so bad, come and get me.”

The child scowled. “What was wrong with 'Kagome'?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I've just grown out of it.” And I wasn't about to play the bird in the cage for this bastard.

“So, this is the kind of game you want to play. No fair. I don't have anything to defend myself with but my own two hands.”

They had more than enough power to send a blast of deadly energy my way, though.

But I was prepared. My defenses, focused down the length of the sword, deflected the brunt of it into the side of the house. I could feel the wood crack inside the scabbard under the heat and pressure, and discarded it as I moved around for a better angle of attack.

The child scoffed when he saw the naked blade. “Your ancestor wielded a great sword when he did battle with me, one that was already legendary in its own right, and even that could not destroy me completely. Do you actually propose to hurt me with that rusty knife?”

It had been a while since the blade was polished, but it was sharp. “It can still cut you, can't it? That's all that matters to me.”

I charged him, alternating my style of attack, throwing everything at him that I had once practiced planning to use on Muraki. His desperation grew visibly the quicker I came after him, and the more my “rusty knife” scratched him. I had expected more from an ancient god of the land, but his human body made him slow, his counterattacks predictable and distracted, easy to deflect. And he knew it. Maybe he had expected me to have qualms about fighting a child, but I knew that if he found an opening, he would not hesitate to kill me. I couldn't afford to be any different.

At last, the edge of my blade caught him on a descending swing, ripping a gash deep into his torso before the tip caught in his spine.

I backed up a step while the child stared at his wound, gushing black blood, in horror, looking all of seven once again. Even if the yato-no-kami was at the helm, his human body was not immune to mortal pain. I could take some small amount of pleasure in knowing that I made him suffer.

He may have had the look of a human child, he may have called himself my brother, but I knew I must not pity him. I had to finish what I started—I had to finish him off. My hands tightened around the grip of the sword, and I focused my aim on the skinny column of his neck.

* * *

 _“That was poorly done.”_

Whatever I had been about to do, sudden blinding pain erased all thought of it from my brain.

I grimaced. One hand slipped from the sword's grip to clutch my head, as if that alone could keep it from exploding. The voice stabbed its way into my mind from every direction, as if every pebble and blade of grass in the land around me had risen up as one to penetrate my skull. It rumbled deep through the ground under my feet.

I saw the child's lips vaguely move to form the words, but the light had gone out of his eyes. As I watched, transfixed by my horror, his body contorted and bent back away from the wound as if on a hinge. Swallowing back my breakfast, I prepared myself for the sight of viscera.

Instead, a mucous bubble emerged from the wound, expanding from the inside out and upward. Something moved and shifted inside it—massive coils that could not have fit inside that child's body, even if it was growing at a grotesque and amazing speed.

As a child, I'd spent whole days in summer just watching insects hatch from their pupal cases. In a way, this was no different. But in another. . . .

Pupa was an accurate name for my self-proclaimed brother. In the end, he was no more than a doll, inhabited by a creature far larger and stronger. But what broke through that sac and climbed out of his body was no fragile butterfly.

A giant serpent rose up above me, its scales slick with ichor. Its head was bulbous and knobbed as if by leprosy, and framed by hair like hanging moss. The stuff of prehistoric ghost stories. The way it stared down at me, I couldn't fool myself for an instant that this was some dumb beast. One look in its eyes and I could sense its intelligence, its ancientness. All the generations of Kurosakis it had seen born and brought low, all the way back to the one who came here to slay it. It had been in these hills hundreds of thousands of years before Ren ever set foot in this village. What was the life of one more of that impious man's spawn compared to that?

For the first time since coming here, I had serious doubts that this was something I could fight, and live. I felt my whole being saturated with insignificance and impotence under the snake god's stare, and, for a moment, faltered.

 _“For that, shinigami, I should flay you alive a thousand times over,”_ the yato-no-kami said. _“That body you so carelessly destroyed was to be my new beginning, the first in a new line of sacrifices for my vengeance—a more_ obedient _line than the one that came before it.”_

I could all but feel the barbs in his words in my skin, and knew who they were meant for. “After all my parents offered up for you . . . What, their own children's _blood_ wasn't good enough?”

The yato-no-kami roared in outrage, an old hurt.

 _“Only living flesh and blood can satisfy me, servant of death. Your forebears knew that, and yet they continued to defy me. Your_ father . . .” Again with the creepy lilt. _“He presumed to deny me what was rightfully mine.”_

I snorted. “A male heir?”

 _“The ideal body to make my vengeance on the Kurosaki line complete. But that too he let slip away, incompetent man. Yes, Hisoka, I had great plans for you. Had you only lived long enough to see them through._

 _“My blood is strong in your veins. I could sense it from an early age. Your emerging power. . . .”_ The yato-no-kami hissed in a breath, as if tasting me on the air, the scent of my thoughts. _“That's right. You do not misunderstand me, boy. It is no coincidence that you have this ability to read what is in another's soul. Even the color of your eyes—surely you must have guessed that these are not natural. Surely you must have suspected their source, these . . ._ gifts _, hidden away within your DNA—”_

“Gifts? Don't you mean this curse?”

 _“Curse? Indeed. . . .”_ A chuckle. _“With your perfect body under my command, I would have unleashed a plague on this village the likes of which it has never seen! Their pathetic prayers would protect them no longer._ That _would have been worthy of the name curse! And it was my_ right _. Your grandfather may have chosen to defy me, but what he failed to foresee was that his choice would only make my blessings stronger. You are as much my child as you are Nagare's. Or that god-killer, Ren's. Perhaps more so. You have felt as much in your soul. The things you have done. The desires you lock away in the depths of your soul—desires for blood, for vengeance! Yes, the two of us are very much alike.”_

I didn't respond, but gripped the sword tighter. Was this how Tsuzuki felt when told he was a demon's child? Like his whole existence was a sin against nature? But he had endured it, and so would I.

 _“It is only a pity you were taken from this world before I was able to regain my full power in it. But rest assured,”_ the yato-no-kami said. _“Your father suffered for his failures. I must concede, he played the part of the willing sacrifice tremendously, though no amount of enthusiasm would save him or his family. In that way, perhaps, you may take after that man. I took my pleasure of him . . . and he suffered most beautifully. One might even say he was glad for it, by the end.”_

A susurrating sound that I assumed must be the serpent's laugh emerged from its lips, and inside I cringed. I had some idea what he meant, I knew that it was as humiliating as what had happened to me, and that was enough. The yato-no-kami knew about my powers, and I didn't want the mental images and impressions of feeling he was sure to send my way to weigh me down. If I allowed myself to be distracted by his taunts, I might as well surrender.

I raised my mental defenses, and focused my thoughts on the real, physical threat in front of me. As the yato-no-kami bobbed and wove, I awaited his attack.

 _“Brave little warrior,”_ he purred. _“Little Susanoo with your rusty dagger. You are only half the size of your noble ancestor, yet far more tragic. I should like nothing more than the pleasure of seeing you suffer as well.”_

The threats slapped about wetly between the serpent's jaws. Something was moving inside its mouth, but I couldn't make out what. I feared the sharpness of teeth.

Instead, when it unhinged its jaws and struck, it was a dozen tongues that shot out at me, quick as a squid leaping on its prey, and just as slimy. And it was half luck that I managed to evade them. I felt one lash my leg, but it wasn't able to grab hold.

The serpent looped around, rearing for another attack; and this time when I saw those tentacle-tongues coming at me, I stepped aside, and swung the blade. With everything I had.

The thing roared as it recoiled. I stood my ground and let the wave of its injury break around me, composing myself for more. Rusty or no, the blade was still plenty sharp enough to cut through those thick, and no doubt tender, appendages.

 _“You will pay dearly for that!”_ the god vowed, mouth dripping black, oily blood.

“I have no doubt,” I said. A smile must have come to my face, despite what surely awaited me. “I intend to commit deicide like my ancestor before me. Only this time, it won't be you doing the punishing, yato-no-kami. This time, I'll make sure there's nothing left of you to utter a whimper, let alone a curse!”

* * *

In my desperation, I reached for the most effective weapon I could think of, the most powerful in my arsenal. I knew what the risks were if it didn't work, or if it backfired, but what choice did I have? It was a risk I had to take. And I wouldn't even need a prop to pull it off.

Just something a little harder to come by at the present moment: a few precious seconds of concentration.

When the serpent attacked me the next time, I didn't dodge him. I met him head-on, thrusting the point of my sword into the roof of his mouth. Though black ichor slicked my hands, coated my wrists, I held my ground.

But my sword didn't hold him. His toothless jaws were stronger than I'd anticipated, and with a mere twist of the head, the old blade snapped in half. I saw the point of it lodged in his mouth flash as he snapped at me again, but disapparated out of reach before those jaws could close around my arm, and twist me the same way.

To the yato-no-kami, it was an act of cowardice, and he laughed again. _“Now we are evenly matched! You cannot hope to defeat me, boy. Give up now. Surrender to the fate that body of yours was made for. Surrender to your ultimate death.”_

 _You will never win against him._ It was someone else who had spoken those words to me, about a different opponent. But I had refused to listen to them then, and I certainly wouldn't listen to this monster's taunts now. When the serpent circled around again, I was ready for him.

His attack met the wall of my shields, but my strength was flagging, my shields lost their sting, and he was more determined than ever to gnaw his way through and finish our fight.

That was what I was counting on. My hands still gripping the handle of the broken sword so hard I thought they would break, the yato-no-kami's energy beating against my own, I chanted the words that would begin the _reibaku_ sequence.

The serpent only scoffed when he figured out what I was up to. _“A soul-capture spell? You really believe that will work on a being such as I, shinigami?”_

I gritted my teeth, and shut out his words. Nothing he said could be trusted. It would work—it must work, or else why would he try to distract me?

 _“I am a part of this land. I was here before the lake, before the trees—before your ancestor was even the merest of thoughts in a monkey's testicles. How do you expect to banish me from this place when so many others have failed? Or perhaps you do not understand where it is my power comes from.”_

Maybe I didn't. But I didn't care. If I failed, one way or another I was finished, and the yato-no-kami would be free to exact that revenge he spoke of on the living. That knowledge and that alone kept me on my course. As a Kurosaki, dead or not, I had a duty to defend. As a Kurosaki, I must not fail.

Like the head of a match catching flame, the spell burst to life. A ball of spinning light reached out to wrap the yato-no-kami in its embrace. I could sense the serpent had not expected it to be quite as constricting as it was.

But then the light reached out to enfold me as well. That took us both by surprise.

Although, somehow after it happened, it seemed like the only natural outcome.

 _“I warned you!”_ The yato-no-kami's triumph was a tangible thing to me; wrapped up in the shell of the _reibaku_ , it beat against me like the wings of a struggling bird. _“Did I not say that you and I were of one blood? You cannot hide your true nature from the_ reibaku _'s light any more than you can hide it from that which made you!_

 _“It's my blood that runs in your veins, Hisoka! Exorcise me, and you might as well exorcise the DNA from your very cells!”_

He was right. I could feel it the moment I began to pull my left hand from the blade's hilt—and the shock of sudden, shooting pain flashed black spots across my vision. Like pulling at a scab, only to watch as living flesh peeled off with it. Except in this case, the wound reached deep inside me, deep down to the very core of who I was. Every nerve in my body was attached to it, every bone and every vein. Even Muraki's curse could not penetrate that kind of agony. But it could resonate in sympathy with it, to make matters worse than I thought they could possibly be.

If I continued on—well, I wasn't sure I could continue on. I wasn't sure that I could willingly inflict that kind of torture on myself, let alone survive it long enough to accomplish my goal.

But if I didn't . . .

The yato-no-kami could sense my hesitation. He was far from unaffected; I could sense that much through the din of my own hell. But how much? Was he right to warn me my struggle was all in vain? Or was that just a lie, meant to stop me doing what was right? How could I know unless I tried?

 _“You won't succeed at this folly,”_ his voice boomed over the storm in my own nerves. _“You cannot kill me! Not without killing yourself.”_

I felt a grin touch my lips at his choice of words, despite everything else.

“Then I guess I don't have much to lose, seeing as I'm already dead.”

I took my hand completely off the broken sword then, and thrust my arms out to my sides. Even though it felt like cleaving myself in two. I don't know how I remained on my feet, let alone maintained my concentration for the spell. Maybe everything that I'd endured at Muraki's hands and after was preparing me for this moment, and that was the only reason I didn't pass out straight away. I only knew that I had to finish the spell or this was all for naught. Even if it flayed me layer by layer down to my very soul, I had to see it through.

My ears were filled with the roar of pure energy surrounding us, and his own. His body coiled and spasmed around me. One of his shortened tongues shot out and wrapped itself around my throat. _“Silence—”_ the yato-no-kami tried, _“Stop this—”_

But my lips kept forming words I didn't know I knew, even as I struggled for air. Beneath my sleeves, the marks of my curse glowed with a violent brightness I had never seen before, but for once I was not afraid or ashamed to see them. For once, they were the least of my concerns.

The wind around us turned hot, blistering. It erupted into flames, but I barely felt it. What was a little heat compared to the rending I felt inside? Now I knew what special hell I had put Tsuzuki through when I performed the spell on him; but I could not be shaken by remorse for something that happened years ago. At least I took comfort in the knowledge that I wasn't the only one feeling it now.

 _“How is this possible?”_ The serpent's awe was crystal clear to me, a small victory that nevertheless felt like a triumph. _“You should not be doing this. This is no ordinary_ reibaku _.”_

“No,” I rasped through my teeth, through my collapsing windpipe. I didn't know what it was either, or how I was doing it. _But then, I'm no ordinary human. Am I?_ I spoke directly to his consciousness, which I could feel entwined with mine. _I'm not even an ordinary shinigami._

The snake god wailed. Now he knew mortal fear, now he knew disbelief, and powerlessness. Now he knew what it was like to be a Kurosaki heir. I saw his eyes fly wide, his pupils narrow to slits so thin they almost disappeared, as though in doing so they could shut out the sight of his own death.

That was followed by the most intense pain I had ever, and hope to ever, experience. And then, at last, there was nothing.

* * *

For a while, everything was black. I didn't dream, or feel anything at all. There was simply nothing. For a while, I was dead.

I don't know how much time passed, but when I came to, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The field around me was scorched and black, and the nearest trees had been stripped of their leaves and bark. I was in slightly better shape, considering, but I probably didn't look it. I certainly didn't feel it. I felt as if someone had turned me inside-out. My clothes were charred, my skin underneath raw and tender to the touch. Some places were still bleeding. Whatever had happened here, it was more than my cells could readily heal.

But I was in one piece, still alive. That was impressive in itself.

And I was alone. The yato-no-kami was nowhere to be seen.

Or felt, for that matter. When I extended my thoughts out across the grounds, nothing came back but silence. Pure, blissful silence. If the yato-no-kami remained, it was in so small and weakened a form I could not feel it. And if it didn't—

Well, it was surely a triumph, but I didn't want to think too much about what that might mean. How could I have done what I did? All I knew was the _reibaku_ spell I had started to speak. I had no idea how it got so out of control, or how I could have wielded something so powerful.

But a larger question pressed upon me: If what I'd done had exorcised the god's very essence, then how was I still here? How was it I had not destroyed myself in the process?

Whatever the answer, I didn't have it, and finding it could wait. I didn't want to stay in that place a moment longer than I had to.

I pushed myself gingerly to my feet. Everything ached or stung, or some dreadful combination of both. I sucked in a breath, and it burned in my lungs, made my throat close down around it and my body seize up to expel what felt like a million little needles. But I gave it time, calmed my racing heart, and slowly unfurled myself, willed my muscles to move. Yes, it was excruciating, but I had suffered much, much worse. This was a good ache, a sign I had survived. Walk it off, I told myself. It can only get better the more I move. And with that mantra beneath my breath, I began to walk.

I don't know where I thought I was going. Anywhere away from the site of my battle with the yato-no-kami was an improvement. One foot in front of the other—that was all I cared about, and consequently I didn't notice where they were carrying me.

Until it all started to feel oddly familiar.

Like a poem repeated so many times, the lips remember forming the words more than the conscious mind does itself. Feet and lips, walking with their own rhythm—and mine had dragged me unknowingly, for the second time, under the cherry trees.

 _I know the grass beyond the door_ , the words rose up out of my deep memory, some English poem we had to learn in middle school literature. _The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. . . ._

I knew the grass here, the way it smelled when it was crushed. The way it felt under my naked back. Wet and green. Ingrown with the moss that liked it there beneath the cherries' shade.

I still remembered the way their branches spread out above me. Every day in Meifu, under the branches that never stop flowering, reminded me of these very trees, in this very grove, and everything they had witnessed.

But these ones had changed. Their leaves had browned and fallen off, the ones that still remained barely clinging on. The grass around my feet was ripe with their rotting. It had been different the last time I was here, a very different kind of sweet. This was the sweetness of autumn, not spring. Decay, not newness. The breeze rustling through hadn't sounded so hoarse back then, like a diseased lung struggling to take in breath.

I should have felt something.

This was the scene of my death. My first and true death. Where Muraki had violated me, and mutilated me with the curse I still wore, etched into my skin. I'd thought at very least it would resonate with the energy of this place. Like it would know it was home. I expected searing pain. But if in fact I felt any, the pain of my burns must have overwhelmed it, because I really didn't feel anything different.

And _that_ made me angry.

Why should it, I asked myself. Didn't I want to be free of him? Didn't I want to forget that whole night ever happened? Why would I want to be reminded of it, here at the spot where it all began? So I could continue to play the victim—hold on to the singular moment that everything I had left was taken from me because it was the only way I could feel, the only way I knew how to live? Hating him, hating myself—wallowing in what I had become like his curse was the only thing that gave any meaning to my existence?

Yes! And why shouldn't I feel that way? I never asked to be murdered. Muraki might have thought it, but I never asked to be touched that way, tortured that way, cursed and left to die. I was right to hate him with everything I had. I was right to be angry, to want justice. To want revenge. To want him to feel the way he'd made me feel those three long years I lay trying to die, wishing for oblivion.

I was justified in wanting to make his life a living hell.

So what if it made my afterlife one at the same time. I wasn't there by choice. And, since the day I arrived to work at the Summons Division, I knew that if I didn't remember what it was that had put me there—if I ever forgot it—

Then what? I would lose the whole reason for my existence?

But I would, wouldn't I? Without a reason to keep going, a killer to keep searching for, I was nothing. I might as well not exist.

I had thought for sure that grove would remind me of it where the unchanging existence of a shinigami had slowly lulled me into a state of complacency. I thought this had been the place whose demons I was least prepared to face when I set out from my hotel that morning.

And instead, the trees here had nothing to say. They were worse than the cherries back at Enma-cho.

I couldn't even tell which one's roots I'd felt digging into my back, or which one's branches I'd stared at while I lay there trying unsuccessfully to imagine myself anywhere else. I'd thought those were the sorts of things that would stay with me always, written into my soul in ink as indelible as whatever Muraki had carved into me—that I'd find telltale signs carved into a trunk, or scraped into the earth. I figured our respective emotions that night, at very least my own terror, would have been strong enough to leave a lasting impression in the landscape—one to last for years, if not decades. But there was nothing.

The grove had forgotten me.

Even the land had forgotten. In a flash of either whimsy or desperation, I bent and dug my fingers into the dirt, lifting out a handful of soil, chunks of grass and small rocks. It was cold and wet on my burned skin; I could feel its grit under my nails. But if my blood had ever soaked this soil, it was long gone now.

I won't forget, I told myself, a stubborn rage rising hot within me. That cherry grove might tell me to move on, Meifu might tell me to move on, but I wouldn't. None of them could understand what had happened to me, the enormity of it. No matter what else I encountered in this afterlife, what had happened here between Muraki and me wasn't something to “get over.” I crushed the dirt in my hand and let it spill over the sides. What I wanted wasn't something that could be accomplished with relics, with material proof. I had to keep it within me, nurture it inside me, if I wanted it to survive.

And without question, I wanted it to survive. Even if it poisoned me, ate away at me from the inside out like a cancer, it was mine. I couldn't just throw it away. I couldn't if I tried. Its roots were too deep, too tangled around who I was. More so, even, than what lurked in my DNA.

And I was afraid of what might happen if I tried to reach in and cut them out.

* * *

I considered staying away permanently then. The thought of going back to business as usual and pretending I wasn't what I was was almost unbearable.

But that wasn't a very realistic option, or smart. Not showing up for work in the land of the dead meant more than just abandoning your job. It meant a full-fledged investigation, in which peace-keeping forces were called out to track you down like dogs and make sure you, an indentured servant of King Enma's court, weren't just trying to cause trouble for the living. I'd only heard about it happening once since I'd become a shinigami, and it wasn't pleasant what happened to the guy when he was caught. Not that there's any punishment worse for an employee of Juuohcho than to remain in his line of work.

But the last thing I needed was for the details of my life to come out in a high-profile investigation. Then there would be no hiding what I was from Tsuzuki.

As soon as I could muster up the strength, I transported myself to the first safe place I could think of: the back room of Watari's office.

I overshot it a little, though, and where I ended up was a mess. I lost balance, and when I reached out to catch myself, I knocked over some rather precariously stacked books and instruments. The noise was horrendous. One of Watari's bird friends freaked and skittered out of the room with a loud squeak. I thought for sure I would be discovered then. I thought for sure the whole building would hear the racket I made.

To my relief, the first human face I saw looming over me was Watari's, his eyes wide and headphones down on his shoulders. Must have been why he didn't respond right away to the commotion.

“Bon! What the hell?”

“Are you alone right now? Is anyone else here with you?”

“Yeah, sure, I'm alone—but look at you! What in god's good heaven have you gotten yourself into this time?”

I must have looked like a nightmare. And smelled like one, for that matter, like—well, exactly what I was, charred meat and hair. But he didn't show it. Next thing I knew, he was reaching for me, rubber-gloved hands dragging me bodily out of that mess and ushering me to the correct room, the one we sometimes used as an infirmary.

* * *

He sat me down. I protested a little bit, wanting to get my excuse out first, but he wouldn't take no for an answer.

I knew once my butt hit the bed, I wouldn't be able to get up again. I didn't want to, either. Now that I was off my feet and out of those haunted, burnt-out grounds, I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and not wake up for a month. But I had to stay awake a little longer.

While Watari examined my injuries, I told him everything that had happened to me since he gave me my family's file: about my return to the house and the lake, the child that turned out to be the yato-no-kami's incarnation, and the fire afterwards. Everything I thought he needed to know, anyway. I could see a judgment start to form on his face at the outset, a vague told-you-so that I knew I deserved, but he held it back for my sake. Especially when I got to the part about the snake god. He forgot all about chastising me then.

“Finally I performed the _reibaku_ on him. It seemed to do the trick.” I left out the bit about its doing the trick on _me_ as well. “Then I teleported back here.”

“Well, from the look of ya, you're lucky to've survived,” Watari said when I'd finished. “Jeezus, Bon, I can't tell you how sorry I am. If we'd known the babe was still alive when it came out, we would have taken better care getting rid of it.”

I shook my head. “But how could you have? You and Tatsumi were already fighting the kami on one front. How were you supposed to know the exorcism wasn't going to be enough? I know you guys aren't sloppy. You must have had good reason to think the . . . baby,” I struggled with the word, “was already dead. Otherwise, if Enma'd thought the kid was going to be an issue, shouldn't it have shown up on the death registry?”

“It would have been part of our mission goals. But we were just told to look into Rui—I mean, your mother's condition.”

Then his eyes lit up, and I could see the pieces falling into place. “That's just it, though. We were sent to investigate her _condition_. The case file said nothing about a pregnancy, because Enma didn't know she _was_ pregnant! We only learned that after a little snooping round. And the spud didn't show up on the death registry because it only records _human_ souls!”

He laughed out loud and slapped his fist in his palm. Then, remembering I was there and it was my mother he was talking about, he sobered. “Sorry.”

“Don't be. Now we know why the child escaped.”

“Yeah, but the point is it shouldn't have. If me and Tatsumi'd just done our jobs and been a little more thorough—”

“You didn't know, Watari.”

“But we _should_ have. Right? We should have figured it out. And then you wouldn't be in this mess. You could have died facing that thing, and it would have been our fault—”

“It wasn't your fault,” I stopped him, and finally he shut up for more than a second. “It was mine. _I_ made the decision to go into that place, even though you warned me it was a bad idea. _I_ decided not to listen, to take my chances. And frankly, I'm thankful I did. If not, I might never have learned the truth.” Not all of it, anyway. I would have known only half the story, and spared myself a lot of pain and torment.

But I would have been only half-complete for it.

“Watari?”

“Hm?” I could feel his gaze back on me, even though suddenly I couldn't look him in the eye. “What's on your mind?”

“Something the yato-no-kami said to me. . . .” I'd long since stopped hearing its voice, its terrible voice, but the way it had smiled at me, in that child's face so similar to my own, I couldn't get it out of my mind. “How come my death was never investigated?”

He didn't answer right away. I don't know if he got the connection, or if he just pretended not to.

“I mean, it was suspicious enough to raise a red flag or two. Wasn't it? It took me three years to die, for crying out loud! Wasn't the Summons Division ever alerted to my case in any of that time? After everything that man put me through. . . . Were they aware of it, and just let it _happen_? Or did—”

I could barely say the words, but I pushed them out, through my teeth.

“You said the registry only records the deaths of human souls—”

Watari wouldn't let me finish. “Don't say that, Bon. You're human. Why wouldn't you be?”

 _You're human. I guarantee it._ I'd said the same thing to Tsuzuki once. Because I wanted him to believe it. Because he'd been human enough to me.

But that didn't make it true.

“The yato-no-kami . . . he told me . . . He said I had _his_ blood—”

“And you believe the word of a giant snake over mine?” He smiled, tried to sound hurt, but the jovial spin he was trying to put on it wasn't fooling either of us. I guess I must have started to tear up or something, because he put both hands on my shoulders, and braced them. “Hey. You're human, Hisoka. As human as me or Tatsumi or the chief. No matter what else, you're plenty enough human to count, anyway, and that's what matters. That's _all_ that matters. You hear me?”

I did. That was the first time I could remember Watari calling me by my given name, too. I could appreciate how much it meant.

He had started making notes on the extent of my burns. Afraid he was going to show them to someone, I managed to ask him between his mumbling to himself if he minded if we kept this between us. And if I stayed there a while to recover. “I still have five days left on my vacation—well, five work days. But I can't let the chief see me like this or there'll be hell to pay.” Though, if I were honest, it was really Tsuzuki I was most worried about finding out.

And Tatsumi, as well. I didn't want him feeling guilty for failing to prevent my injury. He had enough weighing on his conscience without adding my own stupid stunts to the list. And our relationship was fragile enough as it was. I didn't want to ruin what little bit of trust and mutual understanding we had.

“Seems like you've already paid it.” Watari blinked. “But I sure ain't lettin' you go out like this. You kidding? 'Course you can stay here, Bon. I'll just say I'm working on a new sex-change concoction or something, they'll give this place a _wide_ berth. Besides, burns like this . . .” He winced in sympathy. “We'll be lucky if we can get you back to normal that soon. I'll write up a list of some exercises and treatments we can try—”

“But can you do it?”

“Is that a challenge?” If it was, it was just the spark he needed to light a fire underneath himself. He rolled up his sleeves and grinned. “You just watch and see! If we can't get you back one-hundred-percent, we'll at least have you up and—I don't know—whacking moles within the week!”

“Moles?”

“Hey. You haven't seen Enma-cho's moles. Talk about your rodents of unusual size.”

He whistled, and I laughed. Just a little.

It was only after I caught myself that I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had. And the way Watari was looking at me, he must have accomplished his first goal on the list.

* * *

Those five days in Watari's care were some of the shortest five days in my recent memory, and mostly because I spent most of the time sleeping. I'm not sure if Watari gave me something, or if I was just so exhausted from everything I'd done in Kamakura or the extent of my injuries, I slept like . . . well, pardon the metaphor but like the dead. Hardly even dreamed.

When I did dream, it was of the yato-no-kami. I'd wake, more relieved than I could say to find I was back in Meifu, safe in Watari's lab, and the echoes of whatever nightmare I'd been in quickly fading away.

But I would still eventually have to face reality.

I had a god's blood in me.

A nature god's, a kami's, and diluted at that, but still strong enough to have made me an empath. Still strong enough for that ability to do exactly what the yato-no-kami wanted, and ruin my family. That blood was strong enough to help me endure everything that's happened to me since then, where others might have given up or been destroyed, and strong enough to ignite the air with just the right words. Words I would swear I didn't even know—until I was speaking them.

So this was how Tsuzuki felt when we were in Kyoto together. I'd put on a brave face and accepted him in my heart no matter what, brought down my walls to let him in, and yet I still hadn't truly understood. All that shame, that self-hate that came with knowing you weren't entirely human, knowing you were something never meant to exist, something that could come to no good. . . .

No, I hadn't understood in the least.

Until it happened to me.

It wasn't just the kami's words that echoed around me in my dreams. I could feel in them all the hatred he had nurtured for my family, even centuries after the one who killed him died himself. He could not let go. Even after his body was destroyed, his spiritual essence banished to another plane and locked up in his own enemy's genes—even while he watched one Kurosaki head after another succumb to the curse he'd placed on our line, still he could not let go of that anger, that burning, consuming hate.

In that way, were he and I so different after all?

I had freed myself from one curse, but another remained. One I'd been searching for a solution for all along, and now that I was here, I wasn't wholly sure that I wanted it to be lifted. Just a week ago, the notion that I would be in this state of mind would have been offensive to me. But now . . .

When I dragged myself out of bed each of those five days to check my body's progress in the mirror, it was the harsh red lines of Muraki's curse I'd see staring back at me. Faint at first through the layers of new skin, but I knew what to look for, and saw it growing darker with each day.

The difference now, what had changed within me since Kamakura, was that now I was relieved to see them reappear. Can you believe that? Each day I woke up with that curse still in me was another day I was chained to that monster, and to that night he robbed me of everything.

But each day I woke up with that curse was another day I existed here, in Meifu, with the only people I think I could ever truly call friends. It was another day I'd escaped the yato-no-kami's plans for me, and my father's and uncle's as well. Each day I still had my curse was another day I still had Tsuzuki, and my reason for being.

And my anger.

I'll never beat him, Muraki's friend had told me back in Kyoto, as long as I cling to that. Hate had already consumed him long before he met me; trying to fight him with more would only make his hold over me stronger. If I truly wanted to defeat Muraki, I couldn't let myself be controlled by my memories. So long as I did, I kept myself under his power, and my own in fetters. So long as I did, his victory over me and his destruction of everything that was good and pure in myself—what little there had been to begin with—was complete.

But how to free myself? To do the opposite meant gratitude, forgiveness, and I didn't think I could ever forgive. I didn't want to. My hatred for that man had given me a reason to continue on, a reason to fight.

But wasn't that the same reason that kept the yato-no-kami alive all those hundreds of years?

How long could I hold on to my grudge after Muraki finally died? How many innocent lives would my vengeance take before it was satisfied? Would it ever be?

And if it was, if all my resentment ever disappeared, would I still be here without it? Just a blank slate, an empty vessel?

Would it be like that night, and all that pain I had to go through, never even happened?

* * *

“Who else knows what was in that file?” I asked Watari once when he came to check up on me.

“No one besides myself and Tatsumi, I should think. Well, and the chief,” he added on second thought. “And Enma, of course.”

My stomach sank. “Enma, too, huh.”

Watari blinked at me. “Well, he'd have to. It's kinda his business to know what goes on with his own subjects. But me and Tatsumi are the only ones who know what things were really like there in the thick of it.”

In other words, I read between the lines, there was a chance they hadn't included _everything_ in the official report.

It hadn't been my first concern, but now that he mentioned it, I did wonder how much of my family history and its curse had factored into Enma's decision to put me through shinigami training. I used to think I was brought on because of Muraki, but if Enma knew all along that I had god's blood in me. . . .

Was I just another pawn he was putting into place? And for what purpose? Or were Watari and I really the only two people who knew how deep my connection to the yato-no-kami really went? For that matter, I wasn't even sure _I_ knew where that rabbit hole ended.

None of that seemed to cross Watari's mind, of course. He looked at me sideways and, after a moment, said, “If you're worried I'm gonna tell Tsuzuki about any of this . . . Don't. It wouldn't be my place.”

“I appreciate that.”

“That's what you were trying to ask me all along, wasn't it? Hah, I'm not too bad at this psychic thing myself!”

Now that I was sure my secret was safe, it felt like one huge weight had been lifted from me; but that didn't mean I was free of the others. My shoulders ached from the burden, and I wrapped my arms tight around myself.

I must have looked depressed something awful, because Watari's mood changed in an instant. “Oh dear. I've stepped in it again, haven't I?”

“No. It's me. It's Tsuzuki. I just don't want anything to change between us.” We'd already changed, after Kyoto, and I wasn't a hundred-percent sure it was for the better, or that we were any more honest with one another, even if in other ways we were closer. “Kyoto was hard enough on him.” If he found out _I_ wasn't completely human either . . . well, let's just say I didn't think we'd bond over our similarities. “I can't willfully inflict that kind of guilt on him. He's carrying around enough as it is, don't you think?”

Watari still smiled at me over his glasses, but it had sombered. “More than his share,” he agreed.

“It's not like I don't know what that feels like. I do. That's why I want to protect him. I just can't believe. . . .”

I shook my head.

“Some things you kind of wish you could un-learn. You know? Like what happened to my sister. . . .” I looked down at my hands, at the bandages that still covered my palms as if hiding some shameful familial leprosy. “I guess I always knew father didn't really want me, but I never thought it was in his nature . . . To kill his own child . . .”

“What?” But Watari knew what I meant. “No, Bon, you got it all wrong. Is—is that what you took away from our reports?”

I blinked up at him. “Isn't that what happened? My uncle murdered my older sister to make way for a male heir. My father never wanted her, just like he never wanted me. Neither one of us could give him what he needed.”

“Quite the opposite! Bon, your father _loved_ your older sister. When your uncle killed her . . .” To Watari's credit, he looked completely stunned. “Look, I'm sorry you ever got that impression, but your father had nothing to do with it. It all happened behind his back. He adored your sister. Hell, if you could've heard him talk about her, she was the light of his life. I had to wonder if a part of him died with her. He didn't wanna get married again after your aunt died. It was that brother of his's idea, and if your aunt and your mother'd never looked so much alike—”

“Then he never wanted to have another child. He just did it because it was his obligation. To continue the cursed line. I was nothing more than a replacement to him.”

I must have hit the nail square on the head, because Watari made no attempts to correct me. Just stared at me sadly, and sighed.

“He wanted the line to end with him,” he said flatly. Quietly, as if afraid the noise might disturb some sleeping specter. “That was what your grandfather wanted. That's why he chose your father to inherit the curse, rather than his eldest son as clan tradition should have dictated. Because he knew he could count on your father to fulfill that wish. _That_ was why the yato-no-kami was so bent on avenging himself on your parents. He thought they were denying something that was rightfully his. A proper heir to torture.”

He didn't say so, but his meaning was clear: someone special, someone "gifted." Someone like me. Hadn't the yato-no-kami said just as much himself?

“He took your death as an intentional spite.”

“But that's not what happened! It was Muraki's fault. Anyone with half a brain could have seen—”

“But he didn't want to, Bon. He'd already made up his mind. And so had your father. After what happened to you and your sister, he wasn't going to give that snake any more kids to torture. It was gonna end with him. He was gonna be the final sacrifice.”

Torture. Sacrifice. Did my father really think he was saving me from those things? They'd found me anyway, if maybe not in the form the yato-no-kami had intended.

“So, it's a good thing I died. I'm better off this way. Is that it?”

Watari looked horrified that I would even suggest it. He looked like he wanted to grab me, but must have known it would be harder to lie if I touched him. “Wha—No! I never said that—”

“But you thought it. You must have, at some point.”

That he couldn't deny.

“Look. I'm _not_ saying what Muraki did to you was for the best,” he said after what felt like a long time. “There's nothing that can justify doing that to a person, ever. Nothing!

“ _But_. . . .” It came out cautiously. And there was the kicker. “Has being here really been that bad? I mean, I was there myself. I saw the kind of life you would've led if you'd stayed. The kind of life you _did_ have. I know no one deserves the kind of shit that bastard put you through. But you got a second chance out of it, didn't you? A _better_ chance. You got us.”

* * *

He was right about that, at least. Even if it had taken me so long to accept it.

I had Tatsumi and the chief, Terazuma and Wakaba. Watari was continuously proving to me how much he had my back.

And still, somehow—though I'd almost lost track of it over the last week of my vacation—I had Tsuzuki.

When my thoughts weren't still churning over everything that had happened in Kamakura, they turned to him.

I missed him. More than anything, I missed him. It had been less than two weeks, but we'd never been apart for that long in all our time knowing each other. I'd never known until being confined to an infirmary bed how much I depended on just his presence to keep me going. At one point I thought I heard him whistling under the window. At another, I heard Watari talking to him over the phone, swore I even heard them mention me, and it made me sad to think that no matter how hard I strained to hear his voice, I couldn't. I wanted to bolt out of bed and go to him right then, even if just to spy on him from the shadows. Even if just to see that nothing had changed for him while I'd been through so much—that he was still his constant self, and that he hadn't used my absence as an opportunity to disappear.

I was feeling well enough for that, I thought. The pain that still bothered me was negligible, I could walk it off.

Only the fear of him seeing me vulnerable like that was strong enough to overwhelm every other desire. I was supposed to be enjoying my weeks off. What would he think if I came back with first-degree burns? Not that I was sunbathing, that's for sure. I was afraid that somehow my empathy would suddenly work both ways when I saw him again, and he'd be able to see everything I'd learned about myself as if it were written in my skin. He would be able to see what I was. And even if in some very wrong way that made us even, and none of it was his fault to begin with . . .

I didn't want to know what that knowledge would do to him. Nor did I want to roll the dice and find out.

Maybe in that way, father and I weren't so different from one another. Though I could never be sure whether he ever loved me—no matter what Watari would have me believe—he sacrificed so much in his struggle to protect me from the truth about myself.

And ultimately failed, of course. But I don't believe it was through any conscious fault of his own. If I were honest with myself, I couldn't say that I didn't share the sentiment. The same intention. And the same contradiction. Was it really Tsuzuki I thought to protect, or myself? Maybe everything we do for the sake of the ones we care most about is really, inherently, a selfish act. But that doesn't make it wrong.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make it wholly right, either.

* * *

Before I knew it, my vacation was over, and it was time for Watari to kick me out of his lab. I don't know about giant moles, but I did feel well enough to face my coworkers. At least physically. My burns had all but vanished, just a slight bruisy feeling whenever I brushed up against anything hard to remind me I'd been injured in the first place.

I knew they would be expecting me in the office, but I couldn't quite bring myself to go back. Not just yet. Mentally . . . emotionally . . . spiritually I was far from healed. And on top of it all, I still needed a story to tell about Hakone when I arrived. Everyone always mentions the trees in autumn there. Maybe, I thought, the trees here, while lifetimes apart, might give me some inspiration.

When I first arrived in Enma-cho after my death, I hated the cherry trees perpetually in bloom. Even before I remembered what happened to me, there must have been enough of an impression of that night in their color or scent or the particular way the wind sounded through their branches that I couldn't help hating them with a visceral intensity.

Somehow, I don't know when, they started to feel like home. But I had some idea who to blame for that.

“Hisoka! I thought I might find you here.”

I stiffened at the sound of his voice. Even though I'd been aching to hear it, I was afraid to turn around.

Afraid I wasn't ready to face him yet, that my injuries hadn't healed as well as Watari had assured me when he released me. I was sure he would see where I'd been and all the trouble I'd gotten myself into as soon as I turned around and looked him in the eyes. That he'd hate me when he learned the truth, and it wouldn't matter what we'd been through together. It would be as though I'd lied to him the entire time.

But it was pointless to worry. I saw none of that on Tsuzuki's face. Nothing but the simple joy of being reunited with someone he cared for. He was happy to see me. Anything more complicated than that was hidden carefully under the surface, if there anything more.

“You knew I was back?”

“Well, I saw the souvenirs from Hakone in the conference room, so I knew you had to be around here somewhere.”

What souvenirs? I almost blew my own cover by asking.

Watari.

He wasn't nearly as scatterbrained as he let on. And once again I was in that man's debt. Deeply this time. I could have wept with relief, and wondered what else he had thought to clean up for me while I was laid up in one of his beds.

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I knew you and Konoe would never let me hear the end of it if I came back from my first real solo vacation empty-handed.”

Tsuzuki smiled. If he knew about my lie, the secret was safe with him. Either way, there was something comforting in slipping back inside the same behaviors that came naturally to us: the armor of indifferent sarcasm, the gentle teasing that he took so well he seemed to cultivate it.

“I'm just glad to have you back,” he said. “Hope you enjoyed yourself. Trees beautiful there?”

Not as much as here, I wanted to say, and I didn't know where that came from. “Uh . . . yeah.”

“You did take some time to relax, right? And, no, relaxing isn't the same as moping.”

“All I _did_ was relax. It was _vacation_ , Tsuzuki. Jesus. What's with the twenty questions all of a sudden?” And what was he trying to do, write my alibi for me?

“You deserve a break from this job every once in a while, Hisoka. Everyone does. Otherwise it's too easy to take all this darkness personally.”

If he only knew, I thought, biting my lip and looking down at the patch of grass between us. If he only knew my “vacation” had been filled with nothing but darkness that was personal—very personal. This job was what kept me sane. It was what kept me focused on something other than the circumstances of my own death.

He had to know that. We were so much alike in that regard. And yet he continued to pretend neither of us was that way. Somehow he found it in him day after day to put on that devil-may-care mask, to lose himself in the part of the happy fool. . . .

Something inside me finally caved.

Before I could stop myself, I was wrapping my arms around his shoulders, holding him to me tight without any regard for what emotional soup of his might spill over and soak into me. I think I even surprised him. He hesitated, unsure what to do. But when I didn't immediately leap away again or bite his head off for touching me, he must have figured it was safe.

Safe. Yeah, that sums up the feeling of his arms around me pretty accurately, even if at the time I was still tender to any amount of pressure. Even that discomfort felt good. It felt real. I pressed my face to his shirt collar, and breathed in the scent of him, and mourned for what I had missed in the past two weeks. I don't know why. It was only two weeks. Was there ever a doubt in my mind in all that time that I would be coming back here?

For a moment there, standing in that field with the flames and the yato-no-kami all around me . . .

Yeah, I suppose there was.

But there was none of that now. There was nothing to fear here, either. Only pleasure. I could have been bold, gone a step further. I couldn't honestly say a part of myself wasn't curious. For the briefest of moments, I saw myself pressing my lips to his collar, to his neck, to his mouth, finally knowing what it would be like to have him kiss me as I knew he'd been wanting to for so long. . . .

But the window of opportunity passed before I could find the will. I might have felt changed by what I'd learned, and what I'd been through, but not that much. Not yet, anyway. As we slowly parted, I could sense he was very aware of the proximity, but he didn't push me. Maybe he decided that it was progress enough that I'd been the one to initiate physical contact this time. And seemingly unprovoked at that.

He laughed lightly. Such a pure sound, it made me want to cry. “What brought that on?”

He must have expected a hitch. There was the slightest edge of concern in his voice underneath the bewilderment. As if he half expected me to turn around and leave again. For good this time.

I shook my head. “No particular reason. I just missed you, is all.” Would he have even believed me if I'd said I just needed to feel that he was still real?

“Me? Hisoka, it's only been two weeks.”

But the amount of time wasn't relevant. Not when I'd doubted for even a second I would ever see him again.

“I know. And I had a lot of time to think.” About losing him to his damned requests, and how much it terrified me to think about coming in to work one day, and finding him not there. Knowing he'll never be there again. “About—" _Us_ , I almost said. "About our partnership, and how selfish I was to say those things to you—”

“Hey. It's forgotten. And maybe you were right. I should have trusted you enough to give you an explanation myself.”

But that's not the point, I wanted to say. “Well, maybe. But I just wanted to tell you that I'll always be here—”

“I don't know, Hisoka. Always is a very long time.”

“I-I know. But that's what I'm hoping we'll have. A long time, I mean. And when the time comes you decide you're really ready to move on, for good, I'll support you—”

“You know, you're not a very good liar.”

“Will you stop talking and let me finish! I'm trying to say something important.” It was bad enough I didn't think I'd get this chance, let alone swallow my pride long enough to say how I really felt, now I had to deal with his interruptions? I sighed, but inside, it was a shameless grin that was fighting to get out. Damn him for trying to make me feel better.

“Alright, maybe I'm not. But it isn't a lie when I say . . . I get it. I do, Tsuzuki, I know how much it means to you to win your freedom from this place, and what kind of partner would I be if I tried to keep you from it?”

A selfish one, no doubt about it, but could he blame me for wanting to keep him here with me? Why else would I willingly put myself through hell again and again over the past eight years, if not to hold on to him just one more day?

“I don't want you to feel like you have to stay—or do anything else, for that matter, just for my sake. You deserve to find peace just like everyone else, and . . . Well, in the end it doesn't matter what I want, does it? As long as you're happy. That's all I really want. That's why,” even though it would break my heart to see you go, “I won't hold you back.”

That's how much you mean to me.

Tsuzuki smiled at that. The kind of smile I didn't often get to see on his face, not laced with sadness or immature exuberance, not trying too hard. I thought this kind of seriousness would be too heavy for him this early in the morning. I expected any minute he would ruffle my hair and laugh it off, or make some hackneyed comment about sending me on vacation more often if it made me talk like that, just to lighten the air between us.

But he didn't. He just said “Thank you, Hisoka,” and somehow knowing he meant it was enough.

* * *

I still hate Muraki, for all the right reasons. That may never change.

Yet it seems that in some way I should be grateful to him as well. In killing me, he saved me from a horrific existence no less painful than what I went through. Through his curse I escaped another, though I had to go through fire to do so. In death I found a life more meaningful than any I would have wound up with in the living world.

Yet no amount of good can forgive what he did to me; none of the happiness I experience where I am can undo the evil of his actions, or compensate for it. Immortality will not erase it. I will always carry it with me, in my memories, and engraved into my flesh in the form of a curse. An artifact of another man's sin.

But if I had the choice, would I want it any other way? Once I might have thought I knew the answer, but now I'm not so sure. I'm not sure I ever will. And in the meantime, the contradiction continues to wage its battle inside of me.

I've heard it said that God gave us memory so that we can have roses in winter.

But all I'm left with are cherry blossoms out of season.

* * *

  
We are conscious of an animal in us which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.   


  
—Henry David Thoreau   


  


* * *

  
. . . when the gentler part of the soul slumbers and the control of Reason is withdrawn . . .  
the Wild Beast in us . . .  
becomes rampant.   


  
—Plato   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quoted lines come from "Sudden Light" by the Pre-Raphaelite painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. You might also recognize them from the Yami no Matsuei soundtrack:
> 
> I have been here before,  
> But when or how I cannot tell;  
> I know the grass beyond the door,  
> The sweet keen smell,  
> The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.


End file.
